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G.Skill Builds "World's Fastest" DDR4 At 3333 MHz

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 18 comments

G.Skill claims to be first to bring 3333 MHz DDR4 memory to the market.

G.Skill already announced its DDR4 memory kits, but at the time, the fastest kit that it had was clocked at 3200 MHz. Avexir has already promised to build 3400 MHz DDR4 memory, but now G.Skill has announced another Ripaws 4 DDR4 memory kit clocked at 3333 MHz. At press time, this means that G.Skill boasts the highest-clocked DDR4 memory kit available.

The DIMMs run at 1.35 V, which might be 0.15 V over the DDR4 specification, but that does make the CL16 timings possible. CL16 timings may sound a bit high, but compared to other kits with the same timings, these modules are a lot faster. The modules sport black aluminum heatspreaders.

G.Skill is only coming out with a single kit at this frequency, four DIMMs of 4 GB each, creating a 16 GB kit. It is already listed on select e-tailers, although pricing hasn’t been published yet. They should be available to order soon.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

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  • 8 Hide
    jossrik , September 5, 2014 2:34 PM
    Something like this I like to file away for if I win some money somewhere, maybe bingo or something. I should start playing bingo.
  • 0 Hide
    soldier44 , September 5, 2014 3:06 PM
    And the cost is out of reach for most at the moment for this memory.
  • 1 Hide
    atminside , September 5, 2014 8:05 PM
    at what point would timing start to degrade performance?
  • Add your comment Display all 18 comments.
  • 3 Hide
    jossrik , September 5, 2014 9:29 PM
    Quote:
    at what point would timing start to degrade performance?


    The timings are fast enough that with quad channel performance, there's not a big loss of performance. The way to look at it is GHz is bandwidth and CAS/CL is speed. There is a formula for figuring out how fast it is in nanoseconds, but it's pretty reliably between 10 and 12 nanoseconds for modern RAM. Really Really fast RAM is like 8 nanoseconds, but when you compare frames per second for fast RAM and slow RAM it's like a 1 or 2 % difference. There's absolutely no real world benefit of having blazing fast RAM.
  • 2 Hide
    icemunk , September 6, 2014 1:49 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    at what point would timing start to degrade performance?


    The timings are fast enough that with quad channel performance, there's not a big loss of performance. The way to look at it is GHz is bandwidth and CAS/CL is speed. There is a formula for figuring out how fast it is in nanoseconds, but it's pretty reliably between 10 and 12 nanoseconds for modern RAM. Really Really fast RAM is like 8 nanoseconds, but when you compare frames per second for fast RAM and slow RAM it's like a 1 or 2 % difference. There's absolutely no real world benefit of having blazing fast RAM.


    lol the "real world benefit" is bragging rights at LAN parties :p 
  • -1 Hide
    mamasan2000 , September 6, 2014 7:52 AM
    In games RAM speed might not matter but for everything else...
    The caches on the CPU are running at hundreds of gigs per second. DDR3 memory tops out at 5 gigs/s. So, games that use RAM memory ... bad game. Poor performance. You want to avoid getting anything from memory as much as possible once the game is loaded.
  • 0 Hide
    dstarr3 , September 6, 2014 8:53 AM
    That's why graphics cards have onboard memory. Much faster memory with much less latency, and much less overhead to access compared to system memory. Games access GPU memory first and (should) try to minimize the amount of system memory it utilizes for these reasons.

    If you use programs that use heaps of RAM like video editing, CAD, etc, then yeah, you'll benefit a bit from the increased frequency. But for general day-to-day use and/or gaming, you won't see any benefit at all, really. Save the scratch and put it into something more practical. Like, say, a tank of gas.
  • 1 Hide
    gsxrme , September 6, 2014 3:59 PM
    I personally take the first 3 cas timings and add them together. Divided by 3 then divided by speed. The end number is a performance number I use to scale whats better.

    so...

    (((9+9+9)/3)/2200)=244.44 <----- DDR3

    &

    (((16+16+16)/3)/3300)=208.31 <----- DDR4 dual channel
    (((16+16+16)/3)/3300)x2)=416.63 <----- DDR4 quad channel

    This isn't 100% on key but it really helps. Personally DDR4 timings and speed isn't ready. DDR4 with quad seems nice but once the dual channel DDR4 boards release we will need much higher clock speeds or much lower CAS timings to compete with DDR3 in its prime.

    Fyi, im running Gskill 2400Mhz 16GB kit @ 2200 cas 9-9-9-27 @ 1.67v w/o any problems in years.
  • 0 Hide
    Kieran Warren , September 7, 2014 8:30 AM
    In a couple years time this speed will probably become standard. Just like 2133MHz and 2400MHz on RAM was rarely used just a few years ago and now 2133MHz is more or less a standard for a high end gaming PC.
  • 1 Hide
    ohim , September 8, 2014 2:35 AM
    Quote:
    In games RAM speed might not matter but for everything else...
    The caches on the CPU are running at hundreds of gigs per second. DDR3 memory tops out at 5 gigs/s. So, games that use RAM memory ... bad game. Poor performance. You want to avoid getting anything from memory as much as possible once the game is loaded.

    Are you for real ? You know the cache memory on a CPU is like few megabytes... how can you even say, your game must avoid using memory because bad performance?

    Quote:
    In a couple years time this speed will probably become standard. Just like 2133MHz and 2400MHz on RAM was rarely used just a few years ago and now 2133MHz is more or less a standard for a high end gaming PC.

    I think you`re mistaking... most PCs use 1600 Mhz... the rest is just for show or in some cases only APUs can make use of the higher speeds.
  • 0 Hide
    c123456 , September 8, 2014 5:00 AM
    Quote:
    I personally take the first 3 cas timings and add them together. Divided by 3 then divided by speed. The end number is a performance number I use to scale whats better.

    so...

    (((9+9+9)/3)/2200)=244.44 <----- DDR3

    &

    (((16+16+16)/3)/3300)=208.31 <----- DDR4 dual channel
    (((16+16+16)/3)/3300)x2)=416.63 <----- DDR4 quad channel

    This isn't 100% on key but it really helps. Personally DDR4 timings and speed isn't ready. DDR4 with quad seems nice but once the dual channel DDR4 boards release we will need much higher clock speeds or much lower CAS timings to compete with DDR3 in its prime.

    Fyi, im running Gskill 2400Mhz 16GB kit @ 2200 cas 9-9-9-27 @ 1.67v w/o any problems in years.


    The way those numbers ended up, I'd go ahead and arbitrarily take the natural log of them to get a relativity benchmark to show linear progression.
  • 0 Hide
    agentbb007 , September 8, 2014 10:02 AM
    Quote:
    In games RAM speed might not matter but for everything else...
    The caches on the CPU are running at hundreds of gigs per second. DDR3 memory tops out at 5 gigs/s. So, games that use RAM memory ... bad game. Poor performance. You want to avoid getting anything from memory as much as possible once the game is loaded.


    Sorry mamasan2000 but you are just plain wrong, every single game, heck every single app designed today uses RAM.
  • 0 Hide
    mamasan2000 , September 8, 2014 10:59 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    In games RAM speed might not matter but for everything else...
    The caches on the CPU are running at hundreds of gigs per second. DDR3 memory tops out at 5 gigs/s. So, games that use RAM memory ... bad game. Poor performance. You want to avoid getting anything from memory as much as possible once the game is loaded.


    Sorry mamasan2000 but you are just plain wrong, every single game, heck every single app designed today uses RAM.


    Of course it does load from HDD/RAM at some point (when you load a map/start the program for example) but you are not running a game that is loading stuff from RAM every frame. Think about it. Say a game uses 2 gigs of memory on the GPU. Does it get that from RAM? No, you would have 2 FPS (2 gig x 2 = 4 gigs/s, RAM speed is approx 5 gigs/s on DDR3). Does it get that from HDD? No, you would get 1 FPS every 15 seconds (150 megs/s divided by 2000megs).
  • 0 Hide
    BadBoyGreek , September 8, 2014 1:58 PM
    Quote:
    I think you`re mistaking... most PCs use 1600 Mhz... the rest is just for show or in some cases only APUs can make use of the higher speeds.


    +1. In the case of desktop CPUs, they'll hit their limits long before they ever approach the limit of the RAM itself. No point in having all that extra speed overhead when you'll likely never use it.
  • 0 Hide
    gskill support , September 15, 2014 3:32 PM
    For Haswell, the ideal RAM speed is DDR3-2400. Some games will seem to have no difference, but for intensive games like BF4, an obvious performance gain is had with high speed RAM. The common term thrown around is "real world benefit". Everyone obviously has a different purpose for their system, but the idea is to maximize the system's capability. Why buy the best GPU, CPU, and.. standard RAM? You may save $20-30.. but then find out a game is not performing as well as it should be. At that point, you may think you just need a computer when all along it was because you wanted to save a few bucks on RAM.

    For DDR4, latency is high compared to DDR3. DDR3 is high compared to DDR2. There isn't much talk that DDR3-1600 CL9 has a higher latency than DDR2-800 CL5. No ones going to prefer DDR2-800 CL5 because the latency is lower, same with DDR3 to DDR4. Bandwidth on DDR4 is essentially double compared to DDR3. DDR3 latency is lower, but keep in mind most DDR4 kits are still 1.20V. Once you raise the DRAM Voltage, timings can be improved, so expect many 1.20V+ kits with better timings shortly. ;) 
  • 0 Hide
    terroralpha , September 29, 2014 10:24 PM
    Quote:
    Really Really fast RAM is like 8 nanoseconds, but when you compare frames per second for fast RAM and slow RAM it's like a 1 or 2 % difference. There's absolutely no real world benefit of having blazing fast RAM.


    not true on two counts. originally i built my computer using 4x4GB crucial 2133MHz RAM. while running said i was unable to overclock my CPU past 4.2GHz without having stability issues. after upgrading to 4x4GB G.Skill 3000 MHz RAM i am now able to run my 5930K stable at 4.7GHz and my video rendering times went down by about 30% overall. 10% without a CPU overclock, just faster ram.
  • 0 Hide
    bthiago , September 30, 2014 8:05 AM
    Those DDR4 goes well with ASRock Extreme4? Or it require other hardware`s? I`d like to know more about the DDR4s
  • 0 Hide
    gskill support , September 30, 2014 11:50 AM
    No, you need ASUS Rampage V Extreme, X99 Deluxe, or Gigabyte SOC Force for DDR4-3000+

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