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Stability Issues And Dual Channel Mode

I think it's worth noting some concerns we have of the SINXP1394 in Dual Channel Mode. We used a total of 3 pairs of actual Dual Channel DDR memory and only 2 of those worked. Each of Corsair's TWINX3200LL and OCZ's PC3200 Dual Channel memory would not POST in our test configuration. A second set of Corsair Dual Channel memory, pairs of non-Dual tested OCZ PC3200, and pairs of non-dual tested Corsair XMS3200 memory worked fine, and word from other users and OCZ themselves confirms that owners can get their Dual Channel certified memory working with the SINXP1394, so we suspect that our sample was simply more picky with our configuration setup. Yet it's worth taking this into consideration and asking your vendor for confirmation or else at least the ability to RMA your RAM if it should not work in Dual Channel mode for you, because you won't want to run this board with just a single stick of memory and lose out on the huge performance bonuses.

Test System Setup

Our test systems for this review were setup as below:

Intel P4 3.06Ghz
Thermaltake Volcano 9 "CoolMod"
512MB Corsair XMS3200 Memory/512MB OCZ PC3200 Memory
2x256MB Corsair TWINX3200LL DualChannel Memory
Seagate 120GB ATA133 Barracuda ST3100
WinXP with SP1

In single channel mode, memory was set to 2-2-2 timings. For Dual Channel we set to the optimal settings for the modules, which is 2-2-6-2T for the Corsair TWINX3200LL set. All tests on the SINXP1394 were run @ DDR400 settings, but tests on some other boards were run at optimal memory settings (for instance, the GNB Max was run with DDR266 in dual mode, and DDR400 in single channel mode).

Performance Results

We've included results taken from a reference Intel 850 board with PC1066 RDRAM and also the GNB Max results we posted up last week. All tests are run with HyperThreading enabled.

PCMark2002

PCMark is one of the more reliable benchmarks we use as a control in our testing because it is a simple test that gives consistent numbers for comparison.

Right off the mark you can see that the SINXP1394/SIS655 combo is noticeably superior in performance to both the E7205 setup and the 850/RDRAM setup. The gains from going to Dual Channel mode are roughly 2.5%, a modest enough number.