Albatron KX18D PROII: nForce2 Ultra with Memory Ratios

Albatron KX18D PROII: Stress Testing

We performed stress tests on the Albatron KX18D PROII in these areas and configurations:

1. Chipset and motherboard stress testing, conducted by running the FSB at 212MHz.
2. Memory stress testing, conducted by running RAM at 400MHz with 2 DIMM slots filled and at 400MHz with all 3 DIMM slots filled at the lowest memory timings possible.

Front Side Bus Stress Test Results:

As standard practice, we ran a full range of stress tests and benchmarks to ensure that the Albatron KX18D PROII was absolutely stable at each overclocked FSB speed. These stress tests included Prime95 torture tests, which were run in the background for a total of 24 hours.

In addition, we ran several other tasks — data compression, various DX8 and DX9 games, and apps like Word and Excel — while Prime95 was running in the background. Finally, we ran our benchmark suite, which includes ZD Winstone suite, Unreal Tournament 2003, SPECviewperf 7.0, and Gun Metal Benchmark 2. At default voltage, 212MHz was the highest overclock that we were able to achieve with the Albatron without encountering any reliability issues.

Memory Stress Test Results:

This memory stress test is very basic, as it simply tests the ability of the KX18D PROII to operate at its officially supported memory frequency (400MHz DDR) at the lowest supported memory timings that our Mushkin PC3500 LII modules support:

Stable DDR400 Timings (2/3 banks populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	4T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	N/A

It’s not surprising to see the Albatron KX18D PROII run at the lowest timings we could set on the board. We often see 2-4-2-2 timings working well with the better nForce2 boards in Dual-Channel mode, so we certainly expected to run at these maximum speed timings. As we have seen in other looks at memory performance, this does not always translate into the fastest memory performance, but lowest memory timings is one means of comparing motherboards. It is most useful when comparing boards based on the same chipset.

Filling all available memory banks is more strenuous on the memory subsystem than testing 1 bank in single-channel mode, as it tests three DIMMs running 400MHz DDR at the most aggressive memory timings available in the BIOS:

Stable DDR400 Timings (3/3 banks populated)
Clock Speed:	200MHz
Timing Mode:	N/A
CAS Latency:	2.0
Bank Interleave:	N/A
RAS to CAS Delay:	2T
RAS Precharge:	5T
Precharge Delay:	2T
Command Rate:	N/A

We were pleased to see the Albatron handle aggressive memory timings with 3 dimms installed. Settings were nearly as aggressive as 2 dimm timings. You can fill all 3 slots with confidence, knowing that you can run at aggressive settings if your memory supports fast timings at DDR400. Please keep in mind that the fastest timings do not always equal the best performance when it comes to memory. It is also true that the real world performance difference between aggressive memory timings and more relaxed memory timings, such as SPD, can be very small.

We tested all these memory timings using several stress tests and general applications to guarantee stability. Prime95 torture tests were successfully run at the timings listed in the above charts. We also ran Sciencemark (memory tests only) and Super PI. None of the three stress tests created stability problems for the Albatron KX18D PROII at these memory timings.