AMD Announces Gaming-Series Radeon DDR3 Memory

Among most folks AMD is solely known as a manufacturer of CPU's, APU's, GPU's, and some chipsets, but the truth is AMD has been also expanding to a number of other product lines. For example, AMD has already been producing memory for a while now. Of course, AMD will likely not be manufacturing the memory itself though, but rather rebrand some trusted and verified DIMMs.

The existing lineups include AMD Radeon Value Series memory, Radeon Entertaiment Series memory, and Radeon Performance Series memory, which run at speeds of 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz, and 1866 MHz, respectively. Now though, AMD is introducing the Radeon Gaming Series memory, which runs at 2133 MHz.

According to AMD, this memory can boost frame rates in games up to 22 percent compared to its Entertainment series memory, although this was tested on an APU system, so the advantage would likely be less on systems with discrete graphics cards. Using AMD's RamDISK software, AMD also claims that the system can enjoy up to a 65 percent performance improvement in read and write speeds.

AMD's Radeon RG2133 Gamer Series memory kit will come with four DIMMs of 4 GB each, and run on timings of 10-11-11-30 at 1.65 volts. The kit should hit the market this month with an MSRP of $155.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • blubbey
    Right so a 22% performance increase on a platform we know is limited by memory bandwidth - www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-scaling-trinity,3419-8.html - pretty expected. I haven't seen one in a while so it may have changed but discrete GPU's got nothing like the performance increase APU's did from this iirc. Plus much more bandwidth means a much faster ramdisk? Really? I never thought that'd be possible!
    Reply
  • Soul_keeper
    1.65v == failure
    Reply
  • spentshells
    S_K lets be fair the stuff is likely rated at 1600Mhz and the pour on the voltage.
    Reply
  • Soda-88
    If your gaming habits consist of playing F1 2012, then sure, it truly is a 'gaming RAM'.
    Reply
  • eklipz330
    the ram industry is a complete joke... i actually fell for it when i built my first computer... purchased 2gb over 4gb because the mhz was higher and the heatsink was bigger, lmao.
    Reply
  • falchard
    Still ram is limited by the CPU. What is the point of 2133mhz if the processor limits its speed to 1600mhz without doing a bios tweak?
    Reply
  • nullifier
    What these guys said:
    "Still ram is limited by the CPU. What is the point of 2133mhz if the processor limits its speed to 1600mhz without doing a bios tweak?"
    "S_K lets be fair the stuff is likely rated at 1600Mhz and the pour on the voltage."

    The RAM looks cool, but I know my "gaming" motherboard won't push that voltage/speed without taking a dump. I have a feeling a lot of people will have problems getting this RAM up to the stated timings, voltage, and speed.
    Reply
  • albert 89
    Correct me if I'm wrong but they don't state the speed of the CPU ! But 1.65 V is worrying. RAMDisc seems to be a useful tool, if you have a bit of unused RAM space. I believe the performance is even greater on older computers. Checkout http://www.techspot.com/news/50461-amds-radeon-branded-ramdisk-software-now-available-for-download.html
    Reply
  • slomo4sho
    They really need to stop venturing into new markets when they can't even afford to stay in the ones they are in...
    Reply
  • chumly
    Overpriced!
    Reply