To start things off, we plugged in the Mushkin Enhanced Special PC3200 2-2-2 DIMM's into the Athlon64 test system. After lowering the multiplier to 8x and setting the timings to 2-2-2-5, I slowly began to raise the clock speed of the motherboard. At around 207 MHz there were a few stability problems, but that was fixed by raising the memory voltage to 2.7V. We continued to push the Mushkin RAM further, and at 215 MHz we had to raise voltage to 2.8V.

With that voltage we were able to push the motherboard FSB of the Athlon64 system to 227 MHz! Anything higher and stability would be compromised. Still, 227 MHz with 2.8V is definitely very good.

With the Athlon 64 system out of the way, the Mushkin Enhanced Special PC3200 2-2-2 DIMM's were dropped into an ABIT IC7-MAX3 motherboard, and the FSB cranked up. At 217 MHz FSB, the board showed some stability problems, but that was fixed by raising the DIMM voltage to 2.8V. Ultimately, the Mushkin memory rose to the occasion, reaching 236MHz FSB.

Just for fun I wanted to see how high the Mushkin Enhanced Special PC3200 2-2-2 memory would go with higher voltages; at 3.5V it reached 255 MHz with 2-2-2-5 timings. According to a Fluke 50S thermometer, the heat spreader temps reached 54 degrees Celsius here... so this is not an advisable setting if you value longevity of your memory.

All benchmarks were run at 236 MHz FSB. That is the highest speed the Mushkin Enhanced Special PC3200 2-2-2 DIMMs would run with a voltage of 2.8V, which is the maximum safe voltage for most motherboards.

Memory Test Methodology
PCstats tests DDR memory on two major CPU platforms - the AMD Athlon64 and the Intel Pentium 4 - because RAM behaves differently with each processor architecture. For instance, Intel users tend to run their memory at high speeds with high latency settings, and in general that works quite well for Intel-based computers. It would be detrimental to system performance if you were to run the same DDR memory settings on an AMD Athlon64 system, since latency plays a much larger role in system performance. Because much of our audience is made up of enthusiasts, PCstats also runs overclocking tests so you can get an idea on how far the memory will go.

On both Intel and AMD test PCs, we're only interested in seeing how high we can go with the memory running 1:1, as running with other dividers puts the overclocking bottleneck elsewhere, and not with the system memory. On the Pentium 4 test system we sometimes use higher latencies in our tests, as latencies are not as important. With the AMD Athlon64 test system, the DDR RAM latency must run at 2-2-2-5, or the memory's tightest possible timings, as quick access is more important to the CPU design.

PCStats Test System #1 Specs:

processor: amd athlon64 3200+ clock speed: 10 x 200 mhz = 2 ghz 9 x 227 mhz = 2.04 ghz motherboards: asus k8v-dlx videocard: ati radeon 9800xt memory: 2x 512mb corsair twinx 4000* 2x 512mb ocz pc3200 plat ltd ed. 2x 512mb mushkin pc3200 special ed. hard drive: 40gb western digital special ed cdrom: nec 52x cd-rom powersupply: vantec 400b ion software setup windowsxp build 2600 via 4in1 4.51 catalyst 3.9 workstation benchmarks sisoft sandra 2003 pcmark2002 pcmark04 3dmark2001se ut2003

* - memory was running 3-4-4-8

PCStats Test System #2 Specs:

processor: intel pentium 4 2.4c clock speed: 12 x 200 mhz = 2.4 ghz 12 x 236 mhz = 2.83 ghz motherboards: abit ic7-max3 videocard: ati radeon 9800xt memory: 2x 512mb corsair twinx 4000* 2x 512mb ocz pc3200 plat ltd ed. 2x 512mb mushkin pc3200 special ed. hard drive: 40gb western digital special ed cdrom: nec 52x cd-rom powersupply: vantec 400b ion software setup windowsxp build 2600 via 4in1 4.51 catalyst 3.9 workstation benchmarks sisoft sandra 2003 pcmark2002 pcmark04 3dmark2001se ut2003

* - memory was running 3-4-4-8