Mushkin High Performance Rev. 2 Memory
Supplied By: HighspeedPC
Introduction
So, you have just pieced together you're ultimate system. Brand
new Athlon and motherboard, kick-ass video card and all the fixin's. Now you
just need some ram. A quick search on Pricewatch will tell you that you can
get 256MB of PC-133 for 44 bucks. Perfect right? It may not be compatible
with all motherboards but yours is listed. What brand? Oh, generic. But memory
is memory right? Well.... No, it isn't. One thing you do not want to do is
cheese out on your memory purchase. I will soon show you why. Today, I am
reviewing 128MB of Mushkin High Performance
Rev. 2 ram supplied by HighspeedPC.
The black (very cool) PCB is six layers thick and has 7.5ns Mosel Vitelic
chips on it running at Cas2. We will pit it against some generic ram which
I bought from a computer show about a month ago and take a look at the results.
Testing
I tested both of the memory modules on the Abit KT7-A RAID with
a Duron overclocked to 933MHz, 943MHz, and 956MHz (Mushkin only). The corresponding
bus ran at 133, 145, and 147MHz. The generic ram was Cas3 and would only run
with the slowest of memory settings in the BIOS. In Turbo, the computer would
crash with the House Brand. The Mushkin was able to take the Turbo setting
with absolutely no error. I ran 3DMark 2000 on fresh boots with each reading.
I performed the Sandra Memory test the same way. I also, ran the Generic with
the Mushkin at the slower memory settings and Cas3 to simulate 256MB of Generic
Ram. So, let's get to the results.
Results
You can see clearly that the Mushkin, in red, is far outpacing
the Generic. The 128MB of additional Generic ram makes little difference.
In fact, the Mushkin at 133MHz (933MHz CPU) nearly beats the Generic at 145MHz
(943MHz CPU)! The Generic would not load windows at anything above 145MHz.
I was actually surprised that the Generic could even get this high.
The same story is told with SiSoft Sandra. Except, this time
the Mushkin at 133MHz pulls ahead of the Generic at 145MHz. This is probably
because in the 3DMark test, the faster memory bus was able to feed the video
card more data. Sandra is focusing entirely on the memory.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. DO NOT buy cheap memory simply because
you can get more of it for less. What you are actually getting is a lot of
LESS. I believe that the Mushkin could probably have gone even further but
the KT-133A was reaching a limit. I will have to experiment further to see
if I can get past 150MHz. HighspeedPC
is currently selling this RAM for $75 which, as you can see is a good price
for it's performance. I will also have to give HighspeedPC
an extra plug because of the excellent customer service. Scott is very cool
over there and you only have to check out their Reseller
Ratings to see for yourself. It's much better to go to a company you know
than to take a chance on a fly-by-night company.
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