Test System

Today we say goodbye to 32-bit Windows as we convert another system to Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. With a 64-bit operating system we gain support for more than 3GB of RAM, which is where 32-bit Windows leaves off. Yes, there are some tweaks out there to fool your computer into recognizing more than 3 gigs, but if you want real support you must switch to a 64-bit OS.

The test system we'll be using today starts out with the ASUS Striker II Extreme and an ePower Tech 1200w power supply. We then dropped in an Intel C2 Quad Q9450 Processor, a pair of 500GB Seagate hard drives running in RAID 0, and then topped it off with a Visiontek HD4870 video card. Here are the specifics:

Overclocking

My objective was to crank these bad boys up to see how fast they could go and I was fairly pleased with the results. With the voltage at 1.9v throughout testing I was able to boot into windows and run some benchmarks at 2000MHz, but it just wasn't stable.  It really needed just a little more voltage to become stable. In order to achieve 100% stability I had to bump it down a notch to 1969MHz. For those of you that don't know, the 790i does let you key in the memory speed that you want, but it uses dividers to get you close. In this case, keying in 2000 got me 2000MHz, keying in 1999 got me 1969MHz.

Testing

To properly test the RAM I'm going to run the Mushkin HP3-12800 at a few different speeds.  The CPU will be running at 400MHz (1600) and 450MHz (1800) FSB.  From those settings we'll run the memory at 1600 default timings, 1600 tight timings, 1800, and finally as far as we can overclock it.  Now at 400MHz CPU and 1600MHz Memory, I used the linked and sync.  All other speeds at 400MHz CPU was unlinked.  At 450Mhz CPU and 1800MHz Memory, I used linked and sync.  All other speeds at 450MHz CPU was unlinked.

Memory tests will be done using SiSoft Sandra Pro Business XII SP2. ClubOC has been using SiSoft Sandra for many years now and it's pretty much the only benchmarking program we trust for testing memory and processors. Let's run some tests and see where this new Mushkin HP DDR3 memory comes in.

As you can see from the scores, running your memory linked and in sync with the FSB is the best way to go. Sandra turned out some pretty good scores and we even hit the 10k mark at 1800/1800. Hitting over 10k in Sandra was common to see when overclocking DDR2, but it's something we just don't see with DDR3. In fact this is the first DDR3 memory kit we've tested that has been able to reach the 10k mark!