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As shipped, the important section of the BIOS, that which controls CPU performance and memory timings, was setup as above.
If you can understand from the point of view of a major box vendor, which seeks to minimise the number of support calls it gets from customers due to misconfigured systems, you can understand the memory timings as set out of the box.
Trcd of 8 and CL2.5 for the supplied Corsair memory modules however, modules that will definitely ship in all customer boxes as confirmed by Time, is criminal.
The modules are 100% capable of performing with tighter timings on the chosen motherboard, with rock solid stability, and I was keen to show that. To that end, I've benchmarked the box at two different settings, with memory settings as shown in the BIOS shot above, and also at Trcd=5,Tras=2,Trp=2 and CL=2, the optimum timings for the modules at DDR400/PC3200 speeds.
It was a nice exercise for me, just to remind myself what slack memory timings can do in certain conditions. Hopefully it gives you an idea too, as well as Time themselves, who should be confident of tighter timings on their shipping UltraStation's.
I've benchmarked it up against my own XP3200+, Corsair, nForce2 Ultra 400 (ASUS board) and NVIDIA GeForceFX 5900 system, a fortuitous combination that happened to be feasible during the time the UltraStation was being benchmarked.
The comparison system was benchmarked with the same tighter memory timings and broad BIOS settings as the Time box (Trcd=5,Tras=2,Trp=2 and CL=2).
Horror stories of high specced boxes that perform badly can't be ignored, hopefully the Time does well. Here's the software list.
• Hexus Pifast v41
• Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
• Hexus SETI benchmark
• 3DMark 2001SE v330
• UT2003 Demo (Build 2006)
• Comanche 4 Demo
• Serious Sam 2 Demo
• Quake3 v1.30
You'll notice in the graphs that ASUS A7N8X 2.0 Deluxe is used for the comparison box. Where you see 'TT' in the graphs next to the UltraStation name, that denotes benchmarks run with the tighter memory timings, TT standing for tighter timings.
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