Quake 3 Arena was used to test performance under a gaming environment.
The accumulated data shows some surprising results when using the Asus A7A266 motherboard when used in conjunction with the various flavors of SDRAM and DDRAM.
Please note that we arbitrarily chose the following two settings to maintain a sense of consistency and alternated between High Quality and Default (and 16 and 32 bits for both colour and texture settings). The results were tabulated by performing the same test for its particular setting, for a total of 3 runs each, wherein we ended up with the average among the highest and lowest frame rates to obtain our scores.
Here are the listed benchmarks in their respective order:
| 128MB PC133 CAS 2 |
|---|
| Resolution: |
16bit: |
32bit: |
| 640x480 |
111.3 fps |
111.8 fps |
| 1280x1024 |
49.2 fps |
46.6 fps |
| 256MB PC133 CAS 3 |
|---|
| Resolution: |
16bit: |
32bit: |
| 640x480 |
107.8 fps |
107.3 fps |
| 1280x1024 |
49.2 fps |
46.6 fps |
| 128MB PC1600 200MHz CAS 2 |
|---|
| Resolution: |
16bit: |
32bit: |
| 640x480 |
110.6 fps |
110 fps |
| 1280x1024 |
48.72 fps |
46.1 fps |
| 128MB PC2100
266MHz CAS 2.5 |
| Resolution: |
16bit: |
32bit: |
| 640x480 |
110.6 fps |
109.9 fps |
| 1280x1024 |
49.2 fps |
46.6 fps |
The QIII benchmarks, which ran numerous times, revealed that there wasn't much of an advantage when using DDRAM over SDRAM in a gaming setup. In fact it didn't appear to have much of an impact at all.
Conclusions:
After carefully reviewing all the necessary data, I must stress that I have decided that in its current iteration, the current DDRAM technology is an evolutionary advancement, and it's a simple progressive step up from present SDRAM, and not the revolutionary jump which some people have hoped it would bring about.
Since DDRAM is still in its infancy, the technology has some time still to mature, and as I was writing this review, the DDRAM manufacturers consortium announced a newer standard that would allow for a higher spec'd bandwidth memory rating.
The future for DDRAM is promising and you can count on
Crucial/Micron to be an integral part of the group which will help in the
ongoing development and support of this latest technology. With an eye to future
upgradeability though, I would still recommend moving towards the DDR platform. The price difference between SDRAM and DDRAM is effectively level, so there isn't much to hamper the changeover.
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