I will be testing this module on an EPoX 8K3A+ because it is the best KT333 motherboard that I have and I don’t have any Intel setups. I will be using SiSoft Sandra Professional to test this RAM.
Test Bed:
- EPoX 8K3A+
- 1.2Ghz Thunderbird
- Corsair 512MB XMS2700
- 3DPower Geforce 3
All of the benchmarks were done with all of the settings at the most aggressive, 2-2-2 1CMD and 4-way bank interleave and the DRAM clock was set at 166. At 133FSB the scores are not bad and I can tell that this RAM really wants to be overclocked.
I went ahead and bumped the FSB up to 166 and left the voltage at its default of 2.5v, I then booted up and everything went fine, even with all of the timings at the most aggressive and the voltage at default.
I then went for the highest FSB possible while keeping the overall CPU clock speed above stock. After trying different FSB with different voltages I finally got to what was the most stable and best. I was able to hit a FSB of 185 with a VDIMM of 2.9v all of the settings were still at the most aggressive.
After testing this RAM at the slowest settings I was only able to get a few more MHz out of it while keeping it stable so I decided not to benchmark because anyone who is serious about overclocking is not going to slow down the settings for a few more MHz and in the process loosing a lot of performance.
Conclusion
Corsair has really put a lot of work into making a product which is overclockable and that will perform like it says that it will. The EPoX 8K3A+ is known to have low memory scores and at a FSB of 200 the AGP tears, so with another motherboard I am sure that I would be able to get a lot better results. This module is able to run a lot faster and more aggressively than it is tested at and I am very impressed with how high this RAM would go.
If you are looking for some very good 2700 DDR I would really recommend this to you because of how well it performs. The only cons to this product is that it is a little expensive and that Corsair and other companies have already come out with 3000 and 32000 DDR which is able to overclock better than this 2700. Overall I am going to give this product a 9.5/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would really like to thank Robert from Corsair for sending me this module for review.
Pros
- Awesome overclocker
- Can handle high voltage
- Heatspreaders
- Able to perform better than specifications
Cons
- Kind of expensive
- XMS3000 and XSM3200 available
