Corsair XMS2-5400UL

Performance:

Although there are numerous Chipsets for Intel's LGA-775 processors that support a DDR2 controller, and AMD's M2 Socket starting early next year, there are primarily two Chipsets for which the XMS2-5400UL is forced upon - the Intel i955X and NVIDIA's Intel nForce 4 SLI (and the i975X once it reaches production). For testing today we went with using Intel's i955X (Glenwood), which was implemented on an Abit AW8. For accurate testing, we also loaded the system up with NVIDIA's 7800GTX 256MB and an Intel Pentium D; below are the full hardware and software system specifications.

When hearing of Corsair XMS2-5400UL success stories, they're most often heard when running an ASUS P5WD2 Premium, or similar, motherboard. In the case of our overclocking, we were quite satisfied with our results on Abit's AW8. When running at DDR2-667 speeds, we were able to easily run the memory at its 3-2-2-8 timings, and when pushing the memory to DDR2-800 speeds we were able to run the RAM at relatively tight timings of 3-4-4-8. Unfortunately, when it came time to push the memory past the 1000MHz limit, we were faced by downfalls with our processor/motherboard setup. Even when maxing the memory voltages (2.30V) and adjusting the timings as well as the memory divider, we were faced by downfalls not being able to push the memory much further than DDR2-840 speeds. In our testing, we were using Abit's latest official BIOS release for the AW8, which happens to be version 14. Even with inability to push the memory to these higher speeds, and the motherboard/CPU to blame, we were quite satisfied with our results when running at DDR2-800 speeds while clamping to 3-4-4-8 timings and stable in our Memtest86+ v1.60 testing. For comparison purposes, we've also tested the Mars DDR2-667 KLCC28F-A8EB5 from Kingmax that relies on Elpida E5108AE-6E-E chips but have proved to be an excellent performer even with its SPD CAS of 5. Below are the various specifications for which all of the memory was tested.

Corsair XMS2-5400UL: 200 x 14 = 2800 3:5 DDR2-667 - 4-4-4-12 - 1.90V
Corsair XMS2-5400UL: 200 x 14 = 2800 3:5 DDR2-667 - 3-2-2-8 - 2.10V
Corsair XMS2-5400UL: 240 x 14 = 3360 3:5 DDR2-800 - 3-4-4-8 - 2.10V
Kingmax DDR2-667: 200 x 14 = 2800 3:5 DDR2-667 - 5-5-5-15 - 1.90V

For our official benchmarking today, we used our standard set of Doom 3, Quake 4, LAME Compilation, LAME Encoding, FreeBench, and finally RAMspeed to display the results of our memory testing. During testing all of our traditional methods were applied and on the following pages the specific benchmarking details can be found along with all of our results at the various stock and overclocked values.