Mushkin Redline Ascent 3x2GB PC3-12800 C6 Memory Review

Memory Benchmarks

Everest Ultimate is the most useful tool for any and all bench markers or overclockers. With the ability to read most voltage, temperature, and fan sensors on almost every motherboard available, Everest provides the ability to customize the outputs in a number of forms for display on your desktop. In addition to this, the memory benchmarking provides a useful tool of measuring the changes to your memory sub-system when tweaking to measure the differences. Unfortunately with the i7 processors, the results aren't always consistent and we can receive variations as much as 1000MB/s at any given time. Because of this we use multiple runs and drop any of the "high" scores from the averages.

We are off to an interesting start here in the pure bandwidth section. The last three configurations look like they are going to give us some interesting results throughout the benchmarking pages. Our 6-8-6 setup appears to be the overall winner with the DDR3-2000 8-9-8 configuration coming in a close second. It is always a little too early to tell how things are going to pan out after just the Everest bandwidth numbers but our prediction is this pattern will continue throughout testing.

Lavalys Everest latency test clearly favors memory frequency because even with the lower CPU frequency, the DDR3-2000 setup takes a decisive win here. Overall though, the last three configurations all show very good latency here.

SiSoft Sandra is a popular and well used benchmark in the industry but not really a friend of serious benchmarkers. The results SiSoft Sandra produces have been suspect at times basing the numbers it comes up with on system specs and not actual testing. The latest version of Sandra seems to be one of the few programs that appear to calculate memory bandwidth consistently so we decided to include it in today’s benchmarks. Like we have always said with SiSoft Sandra though, take these results for what they are and nothing more.

SiSoft Sandra looks to be playing the frequency game with perfect scaling based on the speed of the memory in the setups disregarding any kind of timings. At the same time, the latency numbers seem to disagree.

As we can see, the perfect scaling seems to have stopped with the DDR3-2000 setup coming in a nano second behind the 6-8-6 setup. Obviously the latency test in Sandra weights memory timings a little heavier than the bandwidth test.

ScienceMark is an almost ancient benchmark utility at this point in time and hasn't seen an update in a long time. It is, however, still a favorite for accurately calculating bandwidth on even the newest chipsets.

ScienceMark again plays the definitive role in the bandwidth game and shows that while the DDR3-2000 setup does come out on top, it isn't by much. From the results we've seen here, we have to say that the 6-8-6 setup really has disappointed in its performance. With a bit of work on the secondary timings and some RTL adjustments, this timing set could really scream. We still can't get over the fact that we are running 100% stable at CL6 with only 1.725v under load with this kit at these kind of clocks. If you asked me if I expected to get close to 1000MHz at CL6 with this kit when I first got it I would have laughed...laughed hard.