Test System

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500

Motherboard: GIGABYTE X48T-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Hard Disk: 500GB Western Digital SE16 (Supplied by Western Digital)

Graphics Card: GIGABYTE 9800GX2 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Cooling: GIGABYTE 3D Galaxy II (Supplied by GIGABYTE)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista SP1

Drivers: Intel INF 9.0.0.1008, Forceware 175.16

Now we come to the testing phase, and again we are pitting the Kingston memory against our fastest candidate; the OCZ XMP 1600MHz modules we have for our test bed.

For our baseline stock tests we ran the memory at 1333MHz, which as we have said many times before, is the fastest standard recognised by the JEDEC. We then moved the modules to 1600MHz which is the fastest standard Intel recognises. Then we finally move to the top speed; this was 1800MHz on the Kingston memory and 1730MHz on the OCZ memory.

EVEREST Ultimate Edition

Version and / or Patch Used: 2006

Developer Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com

Product Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com

Buy It Here

EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems.

Starting with raw bandwidth performance in Everest, we see that at 1333MHz stock clocks, both kits perform identically.

When we move to the 1600MHz using the XMP profile on the OCZ, its lower latencies of 7-6-7 over the 7-7-7 of the Kingston give it a little jump, but at the max speed level OCZ isn't able to reach 1800MHz; leaving Kingston in the lead.