Memory Performance: 16GB DDR3-1333 to DDR3-2400 on Ivy Bridge IGP with G.Skill
by Ian Cutress on October 18, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Memory
- G.Skill
- Ivy Bridge
- DDR3
As mentioned in the DDR3-1600 kit, as processors develop the manufacturers raise the minimum speed to which those processors and memory controllers are rated. This means that higher speed memory kits are guaranteed, and as such the market has to adjust – with the high end Trinity processors supporting DDR3-1866 out of the box, the rest of the spectrum will rise to cover this. As a result, the memory manufacturers have to argue for better deals over their ICs, and make sure the design of the ICs will secure higher yields of the faster stuff which they can sell on to the users. Our leap from DDR3-1600 to DDR3-1866 is a leap from an $80 kit to a $95 kit, or an increase in ~19% in the price.
Visual Inspection
The Sniper kits are the oddest of G.Skill’s lineup. As we can see in the images below, the heatsink is shaped like a rifle. Bonus points if you can tell us what rifle it is meant to be. The benefits of having a rifle as a heatsink may point towards building a Gigabyte G-series system or MSI Big Bang XPower rig, both of which take designs using weapons as part of the standard. Apart from this, there is not much benefit to a stylized heatsink such as this – heat dissipation will be similar to the other kits in this review, and the main reason for this heatsink is to protect the user and competition from knowing what ICs are under the hood.
As with the RipjawsX kit, I placed a module of the kit in our system with the TRUE Copper, just to see the effect of having a large air cooler would have on the nearest memory module on a motherboard:
Again due to the height of the module, large air coolers that impinge on the memory slots will cause the Sniper kits to be placed at an angle.
JEDEC + XMP Settings
| G.Skill | |||||
| Kit Speed | 1333 | 1600 | 1866 | 2133 | 2400 |
| Subtimings | 9-9-9-24 2T | 9-9-9-24 2T | 9-10-9-28 2T | 9-11-10-28 2T | 10-12-12-31 2T |
| Price | $75 | $80 | $95 | $130 | $145 |
| XMP | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Size | 4 x 4 GB | 4 x 4 GB | 4 x 4 GB | 4 x 4 GB | 4 x 4 GB |
|
|
|||||
| MHz | 1333 | 1600 | 1867 | 2134 | 2401 |
| Voltage | 1.500 | 1.500 | 1.500 | 1.650 | 1.650 |
| tCL | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 10 |
| tRCD | 9 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| tRP | 9 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 12 |
| tRAS | 24 | 24 | 28 | 28 | 31 |
| tRC | 33 | 33 | 37 | 38 | 43 |
| tWR | 10 | 12 | 14 | 16 | 16 |
| tRRD | 4 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 7/6 |
| tRFC | 107 | 128 | 150 | 171 | 313 |
| tWTR | 5 | 6 | 8/7 | 9/8 | 10/9 |
| tRTP | 5 | 6 | 8/7 | 9/8 | 10/9 |
| tFAW | 20 | 24 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| tCWL | - | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| CR | - | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
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ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
"Besides, do people really play games with IGP?"They're definitely more likely to play games on a more powerful IGP like AMD's. I thought the whole point of AMD's Fusion lineup was that you could do light gaming on the IGP itself.
SeanJ76 - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Exactly! no one buys shitty AMD products anymore......Boogaloo - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
There are already plenty of benchmarks out there for memory scaling on AMD's APUs. This is the first time I've seen an in-depth look at how memory speed affects Intel's IGP performance.ssj4Gogeta - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
That's what I was thinking as well.I'm hoping for another article using Trinity. :)
Calin - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I'm not sure A10 supports DDR3-2400 (DDR3-1866 was the fastest memory supported)Medallish - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
The A10 has AMP profiles(Like XMP on Intel) up to 2133MHz, however, there's always overclocking, I'm pretty sure Ivy Bridge doesn't suppoort 2400+MHz memory natively either. I'm looking at an FM2 board by Asrock which they claim can support 2600MHz memory.IanCutress - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
My A10-5800K sort of liked DDR3-2400, then it didn't like it. Had to go back one to 2133 for the testing. Even with bumped voltages and everything else, the CPU memory controller couldn't take it. Perhaps the sample I have is a dud, but that was my experience.Ian
tim851 - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I concur.Pointless review anyway. The summary should have read: High-Clocked Memory only needed if your primary usage is either competitive benchmarking or WinRAR compression.
IanCutress - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
Did you know that before you read the article though? This is Anandtech, and I like to think I test things thoroughly enough to make reasoned opinions and suggestions :) Having a one sentence summary wouldn't have helped anyone in the slightest.Ian
SeanJ76 - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
Nothing is better done on AMD products idiot.....