Game Testing 2GB versus 4GB of Memory on Vista 64-bit

The Test System

The test system was running Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with SP1 and all available updates. The Gigabyte X38-DQ6 motherboard was running BIOS F9a, which was released last month and was the most recent. The XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card used Forceware 175.16 video card drivers. The Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770 ‘Yorkfield’ processor was used for testing and was overclocked in order to reach 1142MHz for the memory kits and to also help eliminate the CPU from being the limiting factor in some of the benchmarks. The final clock frequency on the processor was 3.86GHz, which was 660MHz higher than stock. The test system was water cooled with a Corsair Nautilus 500 to ensure throttling of the processor wouldn’t cause any issues. Both the 2GB and 4GB kits of memory were set to run at default timings of 5-5-5-15 2T.

Intel Test Platform
Component	Brand/Model	Live Pricing
Processor	Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770	Click Here
Motherboard	Gigabyte X38-DQ6	Click Here
Memory	2GB & 4GB Corsiar 9136C5	Click Here
Video Cards	XFX GeForce 9800 GX2	Click Here
Hard Drive	Western Digital SATA 250Gb	Click Here
Cooling	Corsair Nautilus 500	Click Here
Power Supply	Corsair HX620W	Click Here
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate	Click Here

CPU-Z and GPU-Z Screen Shots of the Test System:

Now that we know exactly what the test system is, we can move along to performance numbers.