Overclocking Results:

4-4-4-10 5-5-5-15 memory speed: 254 MHz 226 MHz If you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

For the overclocking test, the first thing I tried with the SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express memory was set the memory controller to run the memory at DDR2-800 levels. While the system would POST, it would not boot into WindowsXP. A rapid voltage increase from 1.8V to 2.1V solved that issue. Not bad so far, remembering that this memory is really only rated to run at DDR2-667 levels!

Keeping the default 4-4-4-10 CAS latency memory timings, I decided to push the memory onward at a slower pace, only jumping up at 2-4 MHz intervals. Unfortunately with 2.1V the memory didn't go much further and sputtered out at a maximum speed of 210 MHz. Converted to DDR2 speeds, that's 840 MHz which is definitely not bad for a mainstream part like the SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express memory!

I also tried loosening up the memory timings to 5-5-5-15 to see how much further the SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express would run in that plane. Starting at the 210 MHz mark and going up 2-4 MHz, the memory reached 226 MHz motherboard clock speed, or 904 MHz memory clock speed. Mighty impressive considering that this is mainstream level gear.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express memory test system was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this pair of DDR-2 memory is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: amd Athlon64 FX-62 Clock Speed: 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz 11 x 254 MHz = 2.78 GHz Motherboards: Foxconn C51XEM2AA (NF 590 SLI) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 2x 512MB SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express 2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G8000+XBLK 2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware NF4 9.34 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Benchmarks: Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 SiSoft Sandra 2005 PCMark05 3DMark05 Doom 3 Quake 4 Battlefield 2

Office Productivity	Source: Zdnet

Business Winstone 2004 runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete these activities to produce its performance scores.

Content Creation Winstone 2004 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based, 32-bit, content creation applications in Windows XP.

Office Productivity
Business Winstone 2004:	Points	Ranking
2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 (200/800)	36.2
2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	36.3
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	36.3
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 (200/800)	36.8
2x 512MB SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express (200/667)	33.7
2x 512MB SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express (210/840)	36.8
Content Creation 2004:	Points	Ranking
2x 1024MB Super Talent T800UX2GC4 (200/800)	46.3
2x 1024MB Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	46.7
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	46.2
2x 1024MB Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 (200/800)	47.3
2x 512MB SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express (200/667)	44.6
2x 512MB SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express (210/840)	48.2

At stock settings the SyncMAX PC2-5300 Express memory performs lower, but not by a whole lot. In fact I doubt whether users would even notice when using workstation style applications.