Initial Feedback & Performance (Cont.)

Now we will grab some sample information from Everest Ultimate Edition and get some feedback on the ram's performance. Lavalys was nice enough to allow us to evaluate their software for this review. I really like the wealth of information this utility gives us and we thank Lavalys for there support. This program will also allow us to do some performance analysis, so let's see what Everest will report.

Again we are using a default configuration for the out of the box experience. No tweaking or overclocking will be done for these tests; we want to know what's up with these modules at bone stock! After we tested with RMMA, we rebooted the system to refresh the resources, so that we can get the optimum performance without tweaking the system. So let's check it out...

Memory Read Results

The Ballistix Tracer DDR500 2x 512MB dual channel memory pulls of some great scores indeed. Our test consisted of firing up the system with having everything on default stock timings and voltages. Meaning that we are set at 200MHz HTT and memory timings set to 2.5-3-3-8 as detected by the SPD. The Ballistix Tracer ram kicked off a 6013MB/s score on a synthetic measurement. This makes this ram an excellent 1GB kit for all systems.

Memory Write Results

The Write results are a little different, here we see 4219MB/s of throughput, but this is still some nice score of the Crucial memory. These scores might seem a bit lower then you are used to see but that is normal as this memory is rated at DDR500 with 2.5-3-3-8 timings and we are running these at DDR400 speeds. Of course we will check the same with more adapted memory latencies.

Memory Copy Results

With the new version of Everest Ultimate Edition comes a new feature, namely the Copy benchmark. Also here the Tracer modules prove that they are of high performance with a scoring of 3957MB/s. This should certainly improve when applying better memory timings. But all in all not a bad result at all.

Memory Latency Results

The latency results are a bit of scale but that is to be expected with the 2.5-3-3-8 configuration. So a bit disappointing score of only 111.4ns, again linked somehow to the rated speed and the non adapted memory timings used. We should see some better results once these have been reset to DDR400 appropriate values.

In the end the Crucial Ballistix Tracer does perform quite well taken into account that they are set at timings that are not really appropriate for a 200MHz (400MHz DDR) operation speed. However we will check how these will perform when we actually set the best memory timings for delivering world class DDR400 performance.