Corsair Dominator TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G DDR3 Memory Kit

Compatibility and XMP Testing: Before we sat down in front of our test machine to evaluate the Corsair TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G kit, we installed it into some of the systems we had available at the time to see if there were any compatibility problems to speak of.  We tried the sticks in five different systems, powered by various Intel chipsets. We tested these modules on the following platforms...

With the exception of the Asus Blitz Extreme, which we used for the benchmarks in this article, to quickly test these modules on the other boards all we did was install them, power up the systems, made sure Windows booted and then we ran SiSoft SANDRA's burn-in wizard for a few minutes. We didn't experience any issues whatsoever. The memory kit worked perfectly in all of the platforms we tested.

While the kit was installed in the Asus P5E3 Premium, we should also note that we experimented with XMP and found that the TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G was configured properly by simply enabling the necessary features via the BIOS.

HotHardware's Test System Not all are created equal...

How we configured our test systems:   When configuring our test system for this review, the first thing we did was enter the system BIOS and set the motherboard to its default configuration. The hard drive was then formatted, and Windows XP Professional (SP2) was installed. When the installation was complete, we installed all of the necessary drivers for our components, and removed Windows Messenger from the system.  Auto-Updating and System Restore were also disabled, and we setup a 1024MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation.  Lastly, we set Windows XP's Visual Effects to "best performance", installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drive and ran all of the tests. Throughout all our benchmarking, we had the memory voltage set to their default values, unless otherwise noted.

Performance Comparison with SiSoft SANDRA XI Raw Bandwidth and Latency

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. SANDRA consists of a set of information and diagnostic utilities that can provide a host of useful information about your hardware and operating system. We ran SANDRA's Memory Bandwidth and Latency tests on a Core 2 Duo E6750 powered test bed with the Corsair TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G memory kit installed.  The BIOS was manually configured to the kit's rated frequency and timings, using a combination of multiplier, FSB strap, and FSB manipulation in an effort to keep the CPU speed as close to its default of 2.66GHz and to keep the different reference configurations as close to the same clock speed as possible.  The breakdown of different "stock" configurations is as follows:

In all of the various SiSoft SANDRA benchamrks, the Corsair TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G kit came out on top, but only by a small margin.  This kit has the same specifications as the TWIN3X2048-1800C7DF kit, so it should offer essentially the same performance.