Adata XPG DDR3-1600 CAS 8
Much of Adata's hardware shows up in Europe before it lands on our shores in North America. Although you can buy much of this company's hardware online, the kit we received for review (AX3U1600PC4G8-2P) cannot compete in today's value charts because it isn't available yet for purchase. We’re still testing it, since there's still a high probability it'll appear for sale here eventually.
European pricing would have pit these DDR3-1600 CAS 8 modules directly against the middle of today’s pack, though the 1.65-1.75 V label on the sticker exceeds the voltage range suggested by Adata's competitors. We’re going to take the conservative route today by using 1.60 V, since AMD’s 32 nm APUs haven't been around for long enough for us to give you a comfortable long-term memory controller voltage limit. Remember, we tried to be a little more aggressive when Intel's Clarkdale design emerged and started losing CPUs after a few months. The idea here is to achieve a performance level that'll stand the test of time.
Our motherboard defaults all memory to DDR3-1066, regardless of the modules' SPD values. It configured Adata’s low-latency DDR3-1600 to CAS 7.
Adata’s SPD values look only marginally better, since the CAS 8 timings are pegged to a strange DDR3-1218 data rate. The company does add XMP for the memory’s rated settings, but AMD doesn’t use this Intel-supported technology. As a result, we needed to configure this kit manually.
Adata-branded DRAM carries a lifetime warranty.
