Overclocking Results:

4-3-3-10 5-5-5-15 memory speed: 1066 MHz 1130 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

When it comes to overclocking, we've seen time and again that Mushkin has this down pat. PCSTATS is anticipating good results from this PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM, but at the same time we're unsure how the 2GB capacity per module will affect overclocking.

Anyhow, the overclocking started at 800 MHz and we kept the timings tight at 4-3-3-10. Mushkin's XP2-6400 memory was overclocked 20 MHz at a time.

At 940 MHz the 4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 memory required a voltage boost to 2.0V in order to stabilize the system. At 980 MHz the memory again required a bit more voltage, this time it had to be raised to 2.2V. At 1030 MHz the memory once again started to give us some issues... the voltage was increased to 2.3V.

The 4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 memory reached its maximum speed of 1066 MHz with 4-3-3-10 memory timings, anything higher and the memory was unstable even with extra voltage.

PCSTATS will try to push the memory further with looser (5-5-5-15) memory timings next.

Starting at 1066 MHz, and with a voltage of 2.3V, the 4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 memory broke the 1100 MHz mark. To do this it needed a bit more juice to hit 1130 MHz, which proved to be the Mushkin XP2-6400 memory's top speed. Anything higher and the system was unstable. Increasing the vDRAM voltage further did not help matters.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the 4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 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 PC2-6400 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 processor: intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Clock Speed: 9 x 266 MHz = 2.4 GHz Motherboards: Asus P5N32-E Plus (NF 650i) Videocard: MSI NX7800GTX-VT2D256E Memory: 2GB Kit Patriot PDC22G8000+XBLK 2GB Kit Corsair Twin2X1024-6400C4 2GB Kit OCZ PC2-7200 Platinum XTC SLI Ready 2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-9136C5D 2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-8888C4DF 4GB Kit Crucial PC2-6400 4GB Kit Mushkin HP2-6400 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Intel Reference Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64 nVIDIA Forceware NF4 9.34 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 Benchmarks: Business Winstone 2004 Content Creation 2004 SiSoft Sandra 2007 PCMark05 3DMark05 3DMark06 Doom 3 Quake 4 FEAR

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
2GB Kit Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	30.2
2GB Kit Corsair Twin2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	30.3
2GB Kit OCZ PC2-7200 Platinum SLI (200/800)	30.1
2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-9136C5D (200/800)	30.1
2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-8888C4DF (200/800)	30.5
4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 (200/800)	30.1
4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 (200/1130)	32.1
Content Creation 2004:	Points	Ranking
2GB Kit Patriot PDC22G800+XBLK (200/800)	41.5
2GB Kit Corsair Twin2X1024-6400C4 (200/800)	41.6
2GB Kit OCZ PC2-7200 Platinum SLI (200/800)	41.8
2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-9136C5D (200/800)	41.8
2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin2X2048-8888C4DF (200/800)	42.1
4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 (200/800)	41.7
4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 (200/1130)	42.3

The 4GB Mushkin XP2-6400 memory kit is no slouch in terms of performance. We're putting it up against some pretty fast 2GB memory kits! Overclocking moderately increases performance, although you probably wouldn't notice since the system is mainly user limited in this office oriented application.