Hardware First Look: Corsair CM3X1024-1333C9DHX

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/05/28/corsair_cm3x1024_1333c9dhx/1

DDR3 is hot off the press but does it offer the performance and scaling it's been marketed to provide? Corsair hooked us up with its latest 1333MHz XMS3 modules with DHX cooling so we could find out exactly how DDR3 compares to DDR2.

 

Nice review as always guys, cheers. I think i will stick to my DDR2 till i go quad core next year

Sam

 

Shame Corsair, of all people, didn't have the PR guns to OC their sticks by 4Mhz out of the box...

 

Agreed, needs to be 1337MHz before I'd consider buying it.

Funny thing is, I have no doubt that they'd raise the price for a 1337MHz module just for the idiots that would buy it.

 

£352...

Is there anyone here able to justify paying that much for RAM?


H.B.

 

You had to a few months ago if you wanted 2GB

 

When the Corsair PC2-8888 C4 Dominator 2Gb kit came out, it was about £450, so actually, thats not that bad for good memory.

 

Any chance you can run a test showing DDR2 @ 800 vs DDR3 @ 800 using the same timings pls? Even 1066 would be good if thats do-able, just for a quick like for like comparo.
Also, can you confirm the DDR3 was running at 760FSB please? Just a little confused as you mention 760 DDR in there too.

From those tests though, as you've said it doesn't look like a huge leap at the moment. Guess we'll see reduced timings and increased speeds as the technology progresses and refinements are made.

 

Ah crap, I forgot to put these pics in nm.



It's not 760FSB, it's on a 1:2 divider, so it's 380FSB*2.

The lowest timings we'll see are probably CAS6. I'd have to set the DDR2 timings more relaxed because the DDR3 won't do DDR2 speeds, but at the same speed DDR3 will out perform DDR2 due to a better prefetch and burst rate.

I'll see if I've got time in the week, but I've moved onto other stuff now and the boards are disassembled.

 

It doesn't get better than DDR2 on an Intel system.

But am I wrong saying AMD use more bandwidth?
If not, than wouldn't DDR3 @ 1600 make a real big memory performance increse when they relese a chip that support it. Even tough the latencies are a bit high.

 

AMD has an internal controller that allows them a far lower latency and higher overall bandwidth. You get around 8000MB/s on a good AMD AM2 system.

 

They should consider supporting DDR2 for a few years yet, that way the current chipsets can mature a bit more. We need better timings instead

 

What motherboard did you use for the tests can i ask?

Sam

 

He used the P5K3 Deluxe and P5K Deluxe.
On pages 5 and 6, shouldn't the charts say "Frames per second (higher is better)" instead of "Time in seconds (lower is better)" ?

 

I noticed that too. Other then that, good article.

 

Great article, but ridiculous price for basically 0 performance gain.

For the price of the P5K3 deluxe and the cheaper, slower DDR3-1066MHz C7 modules, you can buy a P5K Deluxe plus 3 (yes, 3!) sets of Crucial PC8000-C5 Ballistix (nearly the same as the Corsair PC8000C5 Dominator, but £50 cheaper). Madness.

 

It seems so obvious now someone points it out. I was concentrating on getting all the numbers for the memory right I forgot to put the test setup in. It's now back on page 2, in full.

Done! Forgot to change it from one graph to the next

 

Interesting article, I wonder how long before DDR3 will be as affordable as DDR2 is now...

Also, this just doesn't seem right:

 

LOOL . DDR3 Never thought that.. thanks for the disappointing. Nice review

 

Well, they *do* look great. They *do* perform as you'd expect: higher latency at same speeds = slower, higher frequency than DDR2 = still pretty quick. Scales well: 1520MHz from 1333MHz modules is pretty damn good imo.