Installation

As a side note to this short section I must say that Mushkin really know how to package their RAM, coming in an airtight plastic airbag the RAM module is protected very nicely during shipping.

Installation of the memory was simple as you would expect. I removed my old PC-100 RAM & inserted the Mushkin PC-133 RAM into the first DIMM slot. Switched the power back on & it was detected by the BIOS just fine. Just to check the CAS rating of the memory I set SDRAM Configuration to By SPD in the BIOS, this confirmed the module could run at CAS 2.

CAS

CAS = Column Access Strobe. A memory’s CAS rating is generally comprised of 3 different settings.

CAS Latency. This sets the CAS latency timing of the DRAM system memory access cycle when SDRAM system memory is installed. Setting this to 2 will yield better performance, although may be less stable if your SDRAM is not CAS2 rated. 3 is slower & should be used when SDRAM isn't CAS2 rated or you want to improve stability. Mushkin’ High Performance RAM can officially run at CAS Latency 2 at speeds of up to 133Mhz.

RAS to CAS delay. This sets the delay between the CAS & RAS strobe signals. Basically setting this to a low number will improve performance, setting this to a higher number can improve stability (Particularly when running the memory above rated speed). In this case the memory module uses a RAS to CAS delay of 2 at speeds of up to 133Mhz.

Precharge delay. Much like the above 2 settings, setting this to a low number will improve performance & setting this to a higher number can improve stability (Particularly when running the memory above rated speed). In this case the memory module uses a RAS to CAS delay of 2 at speeds of up to 133Mhz.

So as you can see, the Mushkin High Performance REV2 PC133 memory module really is designed for optimal performance at high memory bus speeds.

Memory benchmarks

For testing memory performance I used SiSoft Sandra, the latest version at that. Before viewing the tests it should be noted that the motherboard used was an ASUS P3V4X & no memory tweaks were applied via WPCRSET/WPRCEDIT (No performance improvement was noticed either when I did try). Although such VIA chipset based motherboards aren’t exactly renowned for memory performance, so you may want to view the results with a pinch of salt. Also, the CPU used was a Pentium 3 700E, with Windows Millennium Edition being the test Operating System used.

At a later date I shall update these scores with memory benchmarks from an I815 chipset based motherboard, although due to time constraints doing so was impossible (I.e. I don’t have the board yet).

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