Kingston HyperX 1866mhz really boost intel HD 3000 (on x220)

Hi everyone,
I just received today my x220. I also received this week 2x 4gb of Kingston HyperX 1866mhz ram (bought for 120$ at directron.com if anyone is interested). I read a couple of post concerning those memory module reporting that it gave some people extra fps on games. I was very sceptic to be honest but I still decided to pay the extra money to get those kingston hyperX module.
The results :
3dmark 06 score : 5284
I didnt do any testing with other module so I cant garentee that the score is due to the ram upgrade. It look like most people are getting between 3000 and 4000 pts their x220, so I guess the only difference is really the extra memory bandwith that the hd3000 gives.
I will do some more testing tomorrow, maybe try some Starcraft 2
I know the x220 is not really a gaming machine, and their is probably some alternative if you want to game (for exemple an eGPU setup), but I think the 80$ extra I paid for the memory might finally be worth it if I can gain an extra 30% on my frame rate!

edit : for those interested in the complete 3dmark6 report, here it is
http://3dmark.com/3dm06/15955592;js...6/15955592?key=JCF3Qn9ubnYphTzLVyaFwEE0wQdREb

edit 2 : also I used a 90w AC adapter instead of the regular 65w (from my older t61p) ? I think this helped me overcome the i7 throttling issue.

 

I'm not sure but I think that most of the speed increase comes from having two RAM modules (dual channel) instead of original one. I bought another 4GB 1333 MHz (really cheap) and now Mafia II is much more playable ...

 

Going dual channel improve the memory bandwidth a lot more than going to 1866, as zadam suggested.

FYI, 2 x 4GB 1333 DDR3 SO-DIMM costs only $35 currently (lately there are a lot of 2x 4GB laptop memory deal for less than $40)
Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 1333 SO-DIMM CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9 ($34.99 AR - NewEgg - Expires 8/17/11)
I wouldn't spend that much more to get 1866 memory, just to get 1 or 2 FPS more on a non-gaming machine, if there is any improvement at all.

 

You are comparing apples to oranges...

4gb of memory means the graphics get 256mb
8gb means the graphics get 384mb

Also you are running i7 while most run i5

 

Has anyone done valid tests on the reduction in battery life when running
1. single RAM
2. dual RAM
3. fast RAM against standard RAM

???

 

how does starcraft 2 play?

 

I compared 2 GB of DDR3-1333 (which came with my x220) vs 8 GB of Kingston DDR3-1866. The difference reported by the laptop was about 0.3W.

 

Ok I just installed Starcraft 2. The game run pretty well. Way better than on my older t61p (with a dedicadted Quadro FX570m 256mb, based on the geforce 8600gt mobile i think).

I can run the game with everything on High while still being playable (and max 1366x768 resolution). I get between 20 and 40 FPS.
For optimal playability, I maxed everything that run on the CPU (reflective effect + physics). I kept texture and model on HIGH. The rest was put to Medium. On those settings, the game run most of the time over 25 fps (even on heavy combat action). The great thing is that I never experienced any stuttering moment. Sometime when I played on my t61p, their would be some moments when the game drops to totally unplayable fps for a second or two. This is not the case on the X220. Those test were ran with turbo boost enabled.

I'm very impressed with the capability of the x220.

Does anyone have a GOOD benchmark replay to test the game. How can someone proceed in making a good Starcraft 2 benchmark test? What replay should I use? For how long sould I run FRAPS? I dont really know how people test starcraft 2 habitually.

Thanks!

 

I got a decent jump with my 1866mhz RAM. I got about a 300 point bump in 3DMark06 and WEI bumped up .2 for PROC and RAM. I had birthday money to spend, so I splurged, but I would say seeing how the price of RAM is dropping almost daily now, it's probably not worth the money.

 

From what? What was you memory configuration before? 4GB -> 8GB? or 8GB 1333 -> 8GB 1866?