A-DATA Plus-Series DDR2 800 2 x 2GB Review

sdy284 - June 22, 2008

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Testing:

So how will these modules stand up to the competition? To find out, I will be putting them through a series of tests that will stress them to find out how well they perform during tasks. Then I will compare them with other modules on the market with similar specifications to see how they match the competition. All of the speed, timings, and voltages will be run at the same stock settings to ensure that the scores are accurate and that no variables exist to mess up the scores. I will be comparing the Plus-Series to A-DATA's G-Series, which are meant for hardcore gaming, and Mushkin's Redline Series, which are meant for hardcore users and overclockers.

Testing Setup:

Processor: Intel Q9450 Core 2 Quad 333x8
Motherboard: Gigabyte X48-DQ6
Memory: A-DATA Plus Series DDR2 800 2x2GB
Video Card(s): Gigabyte 8800GT
Power Supply: Mushkin 800 watt Modular power supply
Hard Drive: Seagate 750GB SATA
Optical Drive: LG 20x DVD+/-RW
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Modules:

Comparison 1: A-DATA G Series DDR2 800 2x2GB
Comparison 2: Mushkin XP2 8000 Redline 2 x 2GB

CPU-Z: This is a great program to use in order to view the settings that we've set in the BIOS including, CPU speed, bus settings, motherboard manufacturer, BIOS revisions, memory timings, and SPD chip information.

Task Manager: We use this utility to show physical memory, kernel memory, page file usage, and processor usage (%).

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Memory: A-DATA Plus-Series DDR2 800 @ 1066 with 5-5-5-12 and 2.1 volts

I wanted to see how far I could push the memory within the modules' limits and still get good scores. The sweet spot for the overclock I reached was 1066MHz, and all I had to do was bump the voltage to the 2.1v maximum specification and loosen the timings to 5-5-5-12. This gave me a 266MHz overclock, which is a 33% bump. Now that is a great speed increase for a set of memory modules. Everything ran stable and I had no problems with the benchmarks or Memtest86+ with these setting, so that is where my overclocked numbers will be run.