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
One of the most important kits in this review is the DDR3-1600 kit for which G.Skill has supplied one of their RipjawsX range. This kit is of importance due to the close price differential to the DDR3-1333 kit ($5 difference), but also as generations of processors go forward we get an ever increasing suggested memory speed of those processors. Take the most recent AMD Trinity processor release for desktops – all but the low end processor supports 1866 MHz memory as the standard out of the box. Now we can be assured that almost all of the processors will do 2133 MHz, but as manufacturers raise that ‘minimum’ compliance barrier in their testing on their IMCs, the ‘standard’ memory kit has to be faster and come down in price also.
Visual Inspection
The RipjawsX kit we have uses a large heatsink design, with the top of the heatsink protruding 9.5mm above the module itself. As mentioned with the Ares DDR3-1333 kit, there are multiple reasons for why heatsinks are used, and pretty low on that list is for cooling. More likely these are placed initially for protecting which ICs are used in the kit from the competition (using a screwdriver and a heatgun to remove them usually breaks an IC on board), then also for aesthetics.
The heatsink for RipjawsX uses a series of straight lines as part of the look, which may or may not be beneficial when putting them into a system with a large air cooler. Here I put one module into a miniITX board, the Gigabyte H77N-WiFi, with a stupidly large and heavy air cooler, the TRUE Copper:
As we can see, the cooler would be great with the Ares kit, but not so much with the RipjawsX. The kit will still work in the memory slot like this, though for piece of mind I would prefer it to be vertical. As we will see with the TridentX (the 2400 MHz kit), sometimes having a removable top end heatsink helps.
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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andrewaggb - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Fair enough :-)HisDivineOrder - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
You "remember" getting your first memory kit and it was for a E6400. You act like that's just this classic thing.I remember getting a memory kit for my Celeron 300a. I remember getting a memory kit for my AMD K6 with 3dNow!.
Wow, I'm old.
silverblue - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
I remember getting a 64MB PC100 DIMM in 2000... it was pretty much £1 a MB. Made a difference, so it was *gulp* worth it.StormyParis - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Very interesting read. Thank you.rscoot - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
I remember paying upwards of $400 for a pair of matched 2x512MB Kingston HyperX modules with BH-5 chips. Those were the days! 300MHz at 2-2-2-5 1T in dual channel if you could put enough volts through them. Nowadays I don't think memory matters nearly as much as it did back then.superflex - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Your first kit was an E6400?Let me know when you get hair down there.
My first computer was an Apple IIe in 1984, and my first build was an Opteron 170 with 400 MHz 2,2,2,5 DDR.
Magnus101 - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Once again this only confirms that memory speed makes no real world difference.I mean, who in their right mind use the integrated GPU on an expensive i7-system to play metro-2033 with single digit framerate?
The only thing standing out is the Winrar compression, but, how many use winrar for compression?
Yes to decompress files it is very common but I only remember using it 2-3 times in my whole life to compress my own files.
So that isn't important to most users, except for the ones that actually use winrar to compress files.
And I don't get why the x264 encoding seemed like a big deal. The differences were very small.
It's beem the same story all the way back to the late 90;s were tests between sdr memory at 100 and 133 MHz or at different timings showed no differences in real life applications in contrast to synthetics.
But sure, if you are building a new system and choose between, let say 1333 or 1600, then a $5 difference is a no brainer.
Then again, it would make no noticeable difference anyway.
silverblue - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
Here's one - will it affect QuickSync in any way?twoodpecker - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I'd be interested in QuickSync results too. In my experience, not proven, it makes a big difference. I adjusted my memory speeds from 1600 to 2000 and noticed at some point that encoding is 25x instead of 15x. This might be due to different factors though, like software optimizations, because I didn't benchmark after adjusting mem speeds.Geofram - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
I don't believe he's implying that single digit frame rates on a game are going to real-life usable for anyone. I believe the point of the test was simply: "Lets take a system that is generally fast and put it in a situation where the IGP is being stressed. This will be the best-case scenario for faster RAM helping it. Lets see if it does".To me the idea was not showing everyone everyday situations where faster RAM will help them, instead it was to see where those situations might lay, by setting up a stressful situation and seeing the results. Most of the results were extremely small differences.
I agree it's not a noticeable difference in most cases. It doesn't make me feel like I should get rid of PC1333 RAM. I don't fault the logic for the tests used however. It was nice to see someone actually comparing the slight differences caused by RAM speed.