Testing

     The RAM will be tested first in its stock performance environment on a bus speed of 250MHZ. Motherbord: Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with a Pentium-4 2.4C that has a known high-end Overclock of 280MHz. Other sub-systems which could effect testing that will also remain a constant throughout the benchmarking process are the video card (MSI FX5900-VTD128) and the storage/disk system comprised of a RAID-0 array based upon 2x Western Digtial Raptor hard drives.

     Sandra includes a very useful comparison line of reference systems to measure and scale the "Current Chip/Memory" against. In this instance, the reference Intel 875P chipset running 2x PC 4000 (dual-channel) CL3 RAM was outpaced by the Asus and Kingston combo.

     AIDA32 is another benching and indexing program that is available for free public download. While there are a full range of index scores available beyond what is shown, I only included the top five which shows the current benchmark (ran with the Kingston Hyper-X) on top by 78 Megabytes/Second. This particular benchmark shows the memory read performance index.

     The write performance gauge also places the P4C800-E with the Kingston running at 250MHz ahead of the group, and this time by a wider margin - 114 Megabytes/second.

OVERCLOCKING - EVEN FURTHER

     The Asus P4C800-E Deluxe and the Pentium-4 2.4"C" make a great pair when it comes to Overclocking potential. As the system is already overclocked with a 250MHz front side bus, raw CPU speed at this point is 3.0 Gigahertz. Since I had no success running the system with a 5:4 CPU:Memory bus speed divider, the last project with the Kingston Hyper-X will be to find the maximum speed at which it will operate with 100% system stability. This will be attempted with a 1:1 ratio and by applying the maximum BIOS allotment of vDIMM voltage to the DRAM of 2.85Volts. Memory timings will be adjusted to 3-4-4-8-8 with all other settings left in their present state: Spread Spectrum, PAT, and Memory Acceleration all disabled.

     In a dual-channel configuration, 266MHz is the most the RAM will give me on the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe. First run out the gate with Sandra 2004 and we see the memory easily clears the 6000 mark and scores nicely at 6178/6196. Just for reference purposes, the CPU clock speed at this point is 3.2 Gigahertz.

AIDA32 Memory Read benchmark - 266MHZ Dual Channel

AIDA32 Memory Write benchmark - 266MHZ Dual Channel

Conclusion

     Kingston offers the Hyper-X series of DDR in a PC-4000 Dual-Channel kit which is aimed squarely at the Overclockers. While the AMD nForce-2 boards have a rather high memory bus latency that may make the timings on this particular memory unattractive, Intel Overclockers know the importance of sheer bandwidth. 250MHz (the manufacturer rated speed) came and went with ease as we edged the memory bus speed higher and higher. With a maximum "100% stable" clock speed of 266MHz, SiSoftware Sandra Scores edged this memory into the "6000" club. At this clock speed, the 2.4"C" was humming along at a nice 3.2GHz which is VERY average for this model of processor. Since the 2.4"C" is being phased out, that makes the 2.6"C" with its 13 multiplier the next hottest buy. While I'm waiting on my very own 2.8"C" 'M0 Stepping' processor to arrive, I can only imagine that the days of seeing an extremely high bus-speed (at 1:1) overclock are almost gone with standard desktop processors. The Kingston Hyper-X was able to deliver to deliver performance and stability at a level comparable to PC-4200.