Passmark PerformanceTest is an award winning PC hardware benchmark utility that allows everybody to quickly assess the performance of their computer and compare it to a number of standard 'baseline' computer systems.

Twenty seven standard benchmark tests are available in seven test suites plus there are five advanced testing windows for custom benchmarking. CPU Tests, 2D Graphics Tests, 3D Graphics Tests, Disk Tests, Memory Tests and CD/DVD Tests. In our case we selected the Memory suite Tests.

- Memory Benchmarks

This suite contains a number of tests that exercise the memory sub-system of the computer. (Random Access Memory- RAM)

Memory - Allocate small block
This test measures the time taken to allocate & free small zeroed memory blocks (around 100KB block size)

Memory - Cached
This test measures the time taken to read a small block of memory. The block is small enough to be held entirely in cache (if one is present)

Memory - UnCached
This test measures the time taken to read a large block of memory. The block is too large to be held in cache.

Memory - Write
This test measures the time taken to write information into memory.

	800/533 1.8V	800/533 2.2V	1000/667

Similar performance between the different voltages. Some negligible difference is logical. As it was expected the overclocking profile boost the performance a lot.

- Advanced Memory Benchmarks

Memory Speed Per Access Step Size
The first test type, ‘Memory Speed Per Access Step Size’ accesses a large block of memory in various sized steps. First, it runs through the block of memory sequentially, accessing every value. Next it runs through the same block again, except this time it accesses every second value. On this occasion, it runs through the block twice in order to access the same amount of data as the initial step. Next it runs through the same block again, except this time it accesses every fourth value and so makes four passes. And so on, until a certain maximum step size is reached.

The size of the block of memory used for this test is one quarter the amount of system RAM. The size of the steps varies from 1 (continuous sequential access), to one quarter the size of the block of memory (i.e. one sixteenth of system RAM ).

Memory Speed Per Access Step Size

The memory speed exhibited a great difference between the default and the overclocked profile.

Vertical axis (Y axis)
The vertical axis displays a variable scale. Low values at the bottom, high values at the top. Depending on the graph type, this scale will be measured in Megabytes / Sec or Megabits / sec.

Horizontal axis (X axis)
The horizontal axis typically shows either a time period or a number of categories (such as block size) depending on the test selected. Note that 1000 Milliseconds = 1 Second.

Instantaneous result
This is indicated by a red line. This line shows the result that was measured between two samples. Typically, 100 samples are taken during the tests to produce the graphs.

Average result
This is indicated by a yellow line. This line shows the average result taken from the start of the test. In general, the average speed gives a better indication of performance than the instantaneous speed.

Memory Speed Per Block Size

Once again, the performance with the overclocked profile shows a marked increase.

Memory Speed Per Block Size
When a computer program wants to use a section of memory to store data, it makes a request to Windows for the amount of memory it requires. Windows allocates the memory to the program ( unless system resources are very low ) and returns to the requesting program the address of the first memory slot in the allocated block. It is possible that some programs may request very large amounts of memory. The ‘Memory Speed Per Block Size’ test like the ‘Memory Speed Per Access Step Size’ test, is composed of many steps. During each step of the test, PerformanceTest requests a block of memory and runs through the block measuring the average access time. However, on each subsequent step, the size of the requested memory is increased, until finally a block close to the size of the system RAM is requested. In this way, it is possible to observe the different access speeds for the different sizes of blocks.

Typically, it is possible to see very fast memory access for blocks which are small enough to fit entirely into the L2 RAM cache, and slower access times for larger blocks accessed from main RAM. In the case where system resources are low, swapping to the disk may even be required for very large blocks.

Access data type
One byte is the smallest amount possible, which can be read from or written to memory. As the test runs through each block, the user can also select whether we access the memory one byte at a time, two bytes at a time, or four bytes at a time.