Onto the in-game testing, starting with one of our favorites, Half Life 2: Episode 1. The Ballistix running at 1244MHz comes out as the performance winner here. This is the same scenario we saw with our last batch of Ballistix and Episode 1: higher memory speed gives better FPS.


Counter Strike: Source runs on the same engine as Episode 1, and we see similar performance variances here as with the last test; the higher the speed the better the frames. Clearly these Source Engine games benefit more from higher memory speed than lower timings.


Call of Duty 2 is a slightly different story. Both the low timings tests and the higher speed tests are close enough to be within the margin of error (.2 FPS difference). Regardless, they both offer better performance than the stock speed and timings.


When we test Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion we have to use FRAPs and implement user-based repetition when we benchmark it, as there are no demos in Oblivion. This is why we get whole numbers, as FRAPs doesn’t output in fractions of numbers. We see here that Oblivion benefits more from faster memory than lower timings, though they both exceed the perfromance of stock speeds.

The Ballistix Tracer 1066MHz are very nice overclockers. We notice solid improvements in gaming benchmarks as we up the memory speed and/or decrease timings. Higher memory speed seems to win out in most of our games vs. that of the lower timings. Overclocking from 1066MHz to 1244MHz results in a 16% increase in speed without using excessive cooling, which is fairly impressive. It should be noted that these modules do run a bit hot to the touch when overclocked this far, though at the same time cases with decent cooling should help maintain the excellent speed increases.