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

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

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.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

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

18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jossrik
    Something like this I like to file away for if I win some money somewhere, maybe bingo or something. I should start playing bingo.
    Reply
  • soldier44
    And the cost is out of reach for most at the moment for this memory.
    Reply
  • atminside
    at what point would timing start to degrade performance?
    Reply
  • jossrik
    14116670 said:
    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.
    Reply
  • icemunk
    14116670 said:
    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
    Reply
  • mamasan2000
    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.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    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.
    Reply
  • gsxrme
    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.
    Reply
  • Kieran Warren
    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.
    Reply
  • ohim
    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?

    14126281 said:
    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.
    Reply