I was able to run 4x512 MB sticks (surprisingly well) in my IS7-E board last night, and I tell ya, Doom3 is pretty darn smooth. Even at 1 GB I get a slight stutter opening doors, and maybe you guys notice the 5-10 second freeze when loading a saved game first time you run the game. With 2 GB there is no freeze, you can move forward from the gitgo.
I was surprised how smooth the 3DMarks are with 2 GB, particularly 3DMark2005 and 3DMark2003. Even the CPU tests in 3DMark2003 are smoothened out, although still jerky. Of course, load times are cut in half everywhere so the bench seems to be running faster than it is.
Frankly, once you've seen 2 GB, hard to go back to 1 GB. Only reason I had four sticks ram is I put in my spare pair of Buffalo. Rig is below; I was surprised how well I could run 2 GB ram, all slots filled:
IS7-E
2.40C at 236, 1:1, 3-2-3-5 at 2.8 VDIMM, or
2.40C at 286, 5:4, 3-2-3-5 @ 2.8 volts (!!!)
4x512 Buffalo PC3200 with mT -5B C chips
Asus 6800 Ultra at default clock
Even at 236 fsb (2.84 gig) with 2 GB ram, Doom3 and the 3DMarks run smoother than at 294 fsb (3.52 gig), 5:4, 2.5-2-2-5 with 1 GB of Ballistix PC4000 ram. Of course I get a lower 3DMark score with the smaller CPU, but the benches run smoother. Don't laugh at the CAS settings. In actuality, Buffalo at 3-2-3-5 is faster than Sammy TCCD at 2.5-3-3-6
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I was surprised how well the board ran 4x512 sticks at 5:4! Hell, I think it ran higher than with two sticks ram. Unbuffered was 3400-3500 at 236, 1:1. Normally I'd need to run 2 sticks at 250 to get the same bandwidth. On an AI7 board with >2.8 VDIMM I can probably gain 10 mhz at both 1:1 and 5:4.
Doom3 is playable at 1600x1200x32, Max details, 4xFSAA, 16xAniso with 2 GB ram on the 6800 Ultra, default clock. I got 40 fps in Demo1, and 30 fps is generally considered playable. Mouse movements, mouse lag, panning, etc. was acceptable. Didn't do any tweaks to the game config files.