Let us begin with the most important part of the test report, because the optics is of course rather secondary and the possible stable performance is the most important factor. The test results are based on an ASRock AM2XLI eSATA2 SLI motherboard with an Athlon 64 Socket AM2 3000+ CPU on different frequencies depending on the reference clock for the different memory benchmarks. Thus the multiplier adjustment remains on 9x with all frequencies, because an adjustment for the CPU in half multiplier steps would be too inaccurate to get nearly the same CPU frequency for all tests.
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2 is used as operating system. The stability was examined with the software Memtest86
and SiSoft Sandra Lite 2007.SP1 program is used for all benchmarks, since it offers extensive adjustments and a fast result comparison.
First the maximum possible frequency of the memory module was determined. The memory frequency was increased in small steps with a fixed memory timing of 4-4-4-10 2T and default memory voltage, as long as the detailed memory test with Memtest86 runs without any errors. This quite long testing time ensured that this frequency works really stable with these modules.
The highest possible frequency with 4-4-4-10 (Tcl Trcd Tras Trp) timings was stable with nice 443 MHz !
With increased voltages or lower timings it’s possible to run clearly higher frequencies, because the frequency values and timings depends directly from each other.
This highest possible frequency was compared to two adjustments. On the one hand 443 MHz with SPD values (these are given by the manufacturer in the SPD IC), and on the other hand 200 MHz with SPD values. By the way, the “Memory Bus Range” is no benchmark value, but this value is quite simple to calculate by the frequency and is useful for the benchmark comparison.
Here’re the benchmark results:
| Frequency | Timing | RAM Range Int Buff’d iSSE2 | Memory bus range |
| 443 MHz | fix (4-4-4-10 2T) | 6037 MB/s | 14144 MB/s |
| 443 MHz | SPD (4-4-4-18 2T) | 6037 MB/s | 14144 MB/s |
| 200 MHz | SPD (4-3-3-9 2T) | 4530 MB/s | 6432 MB/s |
And here’s a diagram of the benchmark values:
The result of the Crucial PC2-6400 memory shows similar values as with very good PC-4000 DDR memory modules and is thus excellently suitable to overclock a CPU with locked multiplier. The SPD selected timing values with 443 MHz are approximately the same as in the test given timings, so the benchmark results are almost identical. Depending on the used motherboard one should check the optimal timings and optimal clock frequencies several times with a benchmark tool to get the optimum out of these high-performance Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 modules.