Corsair PC2-6400C3 Meets AMD’s AM2 Processors

Memory Latencies Do Matter

When it comes to enthusiast memory Corsair Memory has consistently been producing some of the fastest memory on the market since they opened their doors way back in 1994. Corsair was one of the first companies to launch a high performance DDR2 memory series called XMS2 and today their memory line offers complete top to bottom memory timings for DDR2 800MHz memoery modules. With PC2-6400 (800MHz) memory being supported on AMD’s AM2 platform enthusiasts need to be looking at 800MHz or higher when it comes to memory selection. Our first true test of AMD’s new memory controller on the AM2 processors is going to be a quick look at memory latencies and CL5, CL4, and CL3 memory timings on three different 2GB memory kits.

To complete our PC2-6400 memory latency testing we used three kits of Corsair XMS2 memory to see how memory timings impact gaming performance on DOOM 3 at 800×600 with the quality set to high in the game on a pair of GeForce 7800GTX 512’s in SLI.

Testing the 4800+ (800MHz memory) and the 5000+ (762MHz) we can see that performance becomes better when doing nothing more than using tighter timings. Our Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400Pro modules set to 5-5-5-15 scored in a respectable score on both processors, but was resulted in a 6% frame drop when compared to Crosair’s just released PC2-6400C3 memory running at super tight 3-3-3-9 1T timings thanks to a little extra voltage on the modules. With a 6% performance gain from using low latency memory it really goes to show how big of a role memory plays on these new AMD AM2 processors thanks to the fact that the memory controller is on the processor.

So, now we know that 800MHz beats 667MHz hands down and that 3-3-3-9 1T timings are the best timings to have on the AM2 platforms. As of right now our DOOM 3 score has gone from 134.0 frames per second up to 154.4 frames per second by selecting the right frequency and timings. A gain of 20.4FPS is nice, but what else can we do to increase performance?

Let’s take a look at how 4GB of Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400C3 memory does on the new platform.