Four High-End Quad-Channel DDR3 Memory Kits For X79, Reviewed
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Page 1:Complementing Core i7-3000 With Quad-Channel DDR3
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Page 2:Corsair Dominator GT CMGTX8
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Page 3:G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZHD
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Page 4:Geil Evo Corsa GOC316GB2133C9AQC
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Page 5:Mushkin Redline 993997
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Page 6:Test Setup And Benchmarks
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Page 7:Overclocking And Under-Latency Results
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Page 8:DDR3-1600 Memory Performance
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Page 9:DDR3-1866 Memory Performance
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Page 10:DDR3-2133 Memory Performance
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Page 11:Whose Quad-Channel Memory Kit Is The Best?
You just bought the fastest (and most expensive) desktop platform on the planet. Which company's memory will you use to populate Intel's quad-channel controller? We tested four purportedly high-end kits in order to find out which set is the best.
Anyone willing to drop one thousand dollars on a CPU probably wants to match it up to the best possible memory kit, especially armed with the knowledge that Intel’s new quad-channel memory controller is located within that CPU. How are we to know which kit is the best, though?
We left it up to manufacturers to decide which quad-channel kit they thought would be best, making it clear that our judgement would be balanced between overclocking, minimum latencies, and capacity.
With such general terms for qualification, we ended up with one 8 GB kit (made up of four 2 GB modules) and three 16 GB sets (naturally composed of 4 GB modules), rated at DDR3-2400 or DDR3-2133, and with extremely similar timings
8 And 16 GB Premium Quad-Channel DDR3 Rated Settings | ||||
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Frequency | Timings | Voltage | XMP VCCA | |
Corsair Dominator GT CMGTX8 (4 x 2 GB) | 2400 | 10-12-10-27 | 1.65 V | 1.40 V |
G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZHD | 2400 | 9-11-10-28 | 1.65 V | 1.20 V |
Geil Evo Corsa GOC316GB2133C9AQC | 2133 | 9-11-9-28 | 1.65 V | Auto |
Mushkin Redline 993997 | 2133 | 9-11-10-28 | 1.65 V | Auto |
We're going to go ahead and start testing on our end. In the meantime, check out each kits details on the next few pages. We promise that by the time you're finished reading, the results will be ready for you!
- Complementing Core i7-3000 With Quad-Channel DDR3
- Corsair Dominator GT CMGTX8
- G.Skill RipjawsZ F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZHD
- Geil Evo Corsa GOC316GB2133C9AQC
- Mushkin Redline 993997
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Overclocking And Under-Latency Results
- DDR3-1600 Memory Performance
- DDR3-1866 Memory Performance
- DDR3-2133 Memory Performance
- Whose Quad-Channel Memory Kit Is The Best?
Also it would have been nice to add some Ram Disk benchmarks to the review aswell.
Performance gains via memory even when given a favorable playing field (reduced graphics) are pretty small. The reference CAS 9 1600 appeared to hold its own at a fraction of the cost. As was eluded to I think kits like this are really only aimed towards the small crowd of super-enthusiasts that want to squeeze every last drop out of a system regardless of price.
Nice article and one that I think illustrates both the benefits (ease of overclocking) and disadvantages (less fine tuning) of the multiplier friendly yet limited bclk of both 1155 and 2011.
Also it would have been nice to add some Ram Disk benchmarks to the review aswell.
That's why there's a DDR3-1600 reference data set on each chart. Of course it's quad-channel because that's what the CPU is designed to run, and we wouldn't want to artificially handicap it...would we?
SB-E hasn't changed much here, at most ~1% boost.
Well, I really wanted to see the practical difference between dual to quad channel at gamming =P
Of course we'd like to gauge the marketability of this concept before putting money behind it, so perhaps you can start a thread in the Forums to gauge its popularity? On a platform limited to $500-1000 CPU's, would any readers really spend that much a second time for memory?
Just wondering, but does this mean there is a bottleneck in the CPU? Is OCing the ram worth it when paired with a 5ghz processor? It is just hard to suggest any of these products when there is so little difference between them and the stock version. Good article though
I have always wanted a RAM disc simply due to the slow seek speed of HDDs, but now with SSDs available (and doping in price like a rock) it simply makes sense (and ease of use) to use an SSD or SSD RAID instead. Sure, system RAM is still faster, but SSDs take the cake for speed/size/performance for most applications where a ram disc would have previously had a sizable advantage. Ram discs still have a home in servers, but for video/audio/3d work on a workstation I think the money would be better spent elsewhere.
All the same I would love to be proved wrong and see some real world tests on the subject!
So, I'm saying that it could take a few more advancements elsewhere before quad-channel is able to prove itself a benefit to gaming performance. Games were included in hopes of improved performance due to reduced latency of the better kits, but you really have to drop the settings below "what anyone would really use" to see significant performance changes. The settings used here appear to be just above the point where CPU bottlenecks give way to GPU bottlenecks, and were chosen because they represent the lowest settings a real-world gamer might use with similar hardware. This doesn't sound like a project that would require a roundup of competing/similar products. Since Chris has a 64GB set, I'll ask if he's willing to use it in a RAMDISK article
There is a video on youtube about X79 Ramdisk vs Ram cahce and SSD performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cqfhZvyE80
in the benchmarks they gave us besides the synthetic, at least I think it was the synthetic, there was no real-world performance gains, yet the winner cost $130 more than reference… How in the world begin call that a winner?
That said there is something that I'm interested in. How much of the benefit is DDR three over DDR two? I mean yeah you can tell me DDR three is faster than DDR two and I'll believe you, but what's the real world performance differences. I mean outside of video editing is there any difference, and by what I mean is would there be noticeable difference, hell I even let you go a dual channel DDR two and applied channel DDR three overclocked, and I want to see if there's any real world noticeable difference.
Tests it on games using no more than 2gb, and not suffering a memory bottleneck.
Notice no difference.
Conclusion, unless you know you're really going to need 30+ gb of memory, and actually do have a bottlneck.
2x2gb 1600's is going to be ample.
On the other hand, the format that does have memory bandwidth problems is AMD, on phenoms and on APU (primarily because of shared resources on APU, but on phenoms because I guess their memory controller is poopzilla)