Gaming tests
Two things to note here. Firstly, just enabling PAT technology adds an impressive 800 marks to the non-PAT-enabled score. Secondly, even a PAT-enabled low-latency setup cannot quite beat out high FSBs and moderate latencies.
Again, higher bandwidth and FSB prove to be an effective combination, especially when considered to the non-PAT-enabled results obtained from a DDR400 2-2-2-5 setup.
Even Doom 3 benefits from higher memory bandwidth. The largely indoor and enclosed nature of the game puts a significant onus on your PC's subsystem. Increasing the amount of bandwidth available, almost irrespective of timings and latency, provides a healthy boost to performance.
Performance evaluation
The benchmarks highlight the fact that high FSB and synchronous RAM speeds are a good if your system is able to handle the increased load. Most Canterwood and Springdale motherboards are fully stable at 250MHz FSB. In that view it's prudent, if you're an enthusiast, to purchase a low-speed Pentium 4 Northwood or Prescott CPU and raise FSB speeds to the maximum stable limit. High-speed memory then becomes necessary and Crucial's Ballistix PC4000 performs well. The same can be said for AMD's Athlon 64 platform, with the proviso that proven bus-locking boards are used.
