Corsair TwinX1024-4000 at 260MHz FSB  (1)
Overclocker 17 Dec 2003

Corsair, one of the leading ram manufacturers are quick to respond to the demand of gamers and overclockers. As more and more users are into overclocking on the Dual channel DDR boards, Corsair introduces their TWINX series of ram modules. The TWINX series basically consists of two identical modules tested under stringent conditions for best compatibility and performance with the different platforms; both Intel and AMD Dual Channel DDR chipsets.

TwinX1024-4000 consists of a pair of CMX512-4000 sticks that is rated at CAS 3, 8-4-4. As many have indicated, why rate it at CAS 3. Well, we enquired and found out that at high FSB, the CAS Latency does not impact the performance that much. It can also be compensated with a higher FSB. This can be verified by testing the pairs at different CAS Latency at above 200MHz FSB.

Test Environment :

• DFI Lanparty 865PE
• Intel P4 2.4C
• Windows XP with SP1
• Tyan Radeon 9700Pro with Catalyst 3.9
• Maxtor 40G ATA133 7200RPM
• ThermalTake heatsink/fan

As this is a pair of DDR500, we would expect it to run well under 250MHz. To test that, we would need a processor that is able to run synchronously at 1:1 with the RAM. To our knowledge, the P4 2.4C is the best as it is one of the best overclocking CPUs available in the market. You can easily overclock the CPU to above 250MHz from 2.4GHz to 3.0GHz easily by raising the FSB to 250.

Although most people would have run their cheaper ram dual sticks at a ratio of 4:3 to take advantage of the lower ram speed. In our tests, we ran it at 1:1 so that when the CPU is set to run at 250MHz FSB, the RAM is also running at DDR500 (or 250MHz FSB, PC4000).

During our test, we found out something. That is the DFI Lanparty 865PE defaults its Vdimm at 2.6v which is a bit low. In fact, we can't even get the system to POST when we first cleared the CMOS. The system booted up with 1 stick and we raise the Vdimm to 2.7v, shutdown, install the other stick and booted up with no more problems.

We ran the dual sticks at 250MHz,SPD (C3,8-4-4) and it works very well. What that means is that it performs as rated. The next thing we did was to overclock it further than the spec. ratings. We increased the FSB further to 255 and later 260. At 265, the system was unstable and Quake 3 failed at that speed. We decided to lower it back to 260MHz and found it to be extremely stable.

On the next page, we post out the screen shots of the benchmarks we ran.

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