My memory and benchmark experience

[ergonomics]

Hello

Basically, i had 1.5gb, of 800mhz ram, running at 4-4-4-12 timings. coupled with a GTS at 600/1800 and an e6600 at 3.4ghz i would get about 10.6k in 3dmark 06 (i dont know if thats good or bad, but not the point)

i have now got another 512mb stick of ddr2. however due to the nature of my mobo (p5ne-sli) it seems to play up with 4 sticks of ram higher than 533mhz. fair enough, i lower the speeds and slacken the timings, so now i have 2gb of ram, running at 533mhz, with 5-5-5-15.

i run 3dmark again, i get about 400-500 marks less score. HOWEVER games like company of heroes are a lot smoother, as are the other games i like to play, like FEAR, BF2, BF2142 etc. i can really notice the difference of that 512mb.

Im really saying this as i now feel benchmarks dont mean everything. you can get better/improved gameplay, even if a benchmark score goes down.

but then again, most of you already know this....guess its just for new people trying to put together a new rig to get 'over 13k'

 

[pieman109]

I only use benchies to make sure any hardware/software changes are running properly, they give a fair indication of performance and can useful for fault finding.Other than that, I don't use 'em.
Its the gaming performance thats far more important. Lets face it, you'll only see the difference if you run summat like fraps anyway.