Anubrata Khan :
Pinhedd :
It's hard to know for sure without an actual answer from Corsair and Kingston but I'll take a stab at it.
The specified data rate is most likely the data rate corresponding to the particular speed grade of the DRAM ICs that the DIMM manufacturer purchased from the DRAM manufacturer. This would correspond to the particular testing that the DRAM manufacturer did prior to selling the DRAM ICs.
There are only 3 major DRAM manufacturers in the world, Samsung, Hynix, and Micron. All three of them manufacturer and sell their own DIMMs (Micron's brand name is Crucial) but they are perhaps better known for being the component source for other manufacturers such as Corsair, G.Skill, Mushkin, and Kingston.
The tested data rate is most likely the data rate that the DIMM manufacturer tested the DRAM ICs with. A DRAM manufacturer may sell a particular model IC with 4 speed grades corresponding to DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1866. A certain selection of chips in each grade may be able to operate at data rates above that specified by the manufacturer. This can be accomplished by a combination of hand picking components and tweaking them if need be (over by providing more voltage than is specified by the JEDEC standard).
But will it work at 1600Mhz or I have to manually clock it to run at 1600Mhz?
It depends.
Many modules that are advertised at a certain rate use non-standard or non-specified values to reach that rate. Configuring non-standard values by default is dangerous, so most (almost all) modules will not do it by default. Instead, the firmware will probe an EEPROM that is called the Serial Presence Detect (SPD) and which is located on the PCB of each DIMM and read from it a number of standard performance profiles. It will then compare these standard performance profiles against those supported by the memory controller and choose the highest common denominator. In the case of a DDR3-1600 DIMM that uses hand picked DDR3-1333 DRAM ICs, the DIMM may have standard profiles (JEDEC profiles) for DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, and DDR3-1333 as these match the specifications of the DRAM ICs that were purchased from the manufacturer.
The SPD may also contain additional high-performance profiles (XMP profiles), which include the configuration for the advertised features. XMP profiles will not be selected by default, and can only be selected by enabling the XMP performance tuner in the system setup. Alternatively, the configuration can be entered manually.
There are some modules out there (Kingston Beast comes to mind) that use high data rate DRAM ICs and have standard profiles to accompany them.
Examples,
DIMM #1: Advertised as DDR3-1600, built on DDR3-1333 DRAM ICs. Contains JEDEC profiles for DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, and DDR3-1333. Contains an XMP profile for DDR3-1600. This module will be automatically be configured up to DDR3-1333 on any platform that supports that data rate, or lower on a platform that does not. Sandybridge would configure it for DDR3-1333, but Nehalem would configure it for DDR3-1066. DDR3-1600 can be achieved by activating the XMP tuner and selecting the profile, or entering the appropriate values manually.
DIMM #2: Advertised as DDR3-1600, built on DDR3-1600 DRAM ICs. Contains JEDEC profiles for DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1600. Contains no XMP profiles. This module will automatically be configured up to DDR3-1600 on any platform that supports that data rate, or lower on a platform that does not. Nehalem would configure it for DDR3-1066, Sandybridge would configure it for DDR3-1333, and Sandybridge-E would configure it for DDR3-1600. There is no need to enable the XMP tuner because the DDR3-1600 support is native. However, if DDR3-1600 is not supported by the platform, the values must be entered manually.
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