Benchmark MethodologyAs has been mentioned a couple times, there isn't really anything remotely related to stock settings with these modules. We have also all but ran out of ideas for comparisons between various clocks resulting in question answering results. These two factors have resulted in us deciding to simply bench the exact setups that we found to be 24/7 stable in the previous Stability Testing & Overclocking section.
The results identified with the blue bars in the chart will be that of our 6-7-6-18 overclock of DDR3-1854 with the CPU at 3556MHz. The two grey bars will represent our CL7 overclocks of 7-7-6-20 at DDR3-2070 with the CPU at 3972MHz and 7-8-7-20 at DDR3-2094 with the CPU at 4016MHz. The last result in the charts will be the red bar that represents our closest match to the specified operating frequency of DDR3-2130 at timings of 8-9-8-24 alongside a CPU clock of 4085MHz.
Despite not really thinking the results would be interesting, our top three overclocks all have similar clocks on both the CPU and memory, that it might result in interesting results due to the different timing sets. The last of our methodology consists of how we setup the OS for benchmarking and the run the individual’s benches: - Windows Vista x64 w/SP1 is installed using a full format
- Intel Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed followed by a defragment and a reboot
- At time of benchmarks the latest drivers were downloaded from their official web sites as the latest drivers, most notable, NVIDIA GeForce Release 186.18 WHQL
- Programs and games are then installed followed by another defragment
- Windows updates are then completed installing all available updates followed by a defragment
- Benchmarks are each ran three times after a clean reboot for every iteration of the benchmark unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged
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