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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Peanutsrevenge - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Thanks Ian.Well, except for making me feel ludicrously old, first memory kit of 4GB DDR2?
Mine was back in SIMM days, when I think I added an 8MB 72pin stick to my existing 4MB stick.
Although the external math co-processor might have come first.
And I'm only 31.
You shall now always be Dr Evil Cutress to me.
IanCutress - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
First *purchased* memory kit. I dealt with plenty of older memory thanks to hand me downs or prebuilt systems from my family at the time. I still have some SDRAM around somewhere, or some 8MB sticks of something or other. It's in a box under the desk ;)Haha, I've been called worse :D
Ian
alpha754293 - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I would have figured that with a memory test/benchmarking that you would be running Stream test.And with all this talk about the various latencies (measured in clock cycles) - a) a comparison should be given between the theorectical calculations and the actual performance and b) that you would think that you'd use something like lmbench in order to try to better quantify/test that (in addition to the actual games, tools, and applications).
Most of the results are pretty much inconclusive since the standard deviation is within the margin of error.
IanCutress - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Main reason is to steer away from synthetics. Synthetics frustrate me so - they will easily show the difference between a 1600 C9 and 2400 C10 kit, but what is that difference in real life? If latencies and burst speeds are x% difference in the synthetic, does that actually make a difference when playing Portal 2? Hence the requirement of this review to focus on the practical rather than the synthetic.Regarding being within standard deviations, the results you see are the culmination of multiple tests. The standard deviations are actually quite low as the results are enormously repeatable. I did a science doctorate, I make sure my numbers are valid.
Ian
Tchamber - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Back in 2009 I picked up a 3x2GB kit of Mushkin DDR3 1600 with timings of 6-7-6-18. Why don't we see low latency like that any more?IanCutress - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Those were linked to different types of memory chips at the time - the Elpida 'Hyper' ICs (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2799). Nice speeds, but high fail rates and low yields. They have been replaced by chips that are slightly slower, but a lot more reliable. Also to note that those Elpida Hyper kits worked great with Clarkdale and Nehalem, but are poor with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.Ian
CherryBOMB - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Can you explain why you say Hyper' IC's are " are poor with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge."As I stated "I have 16gb of the fastest money could buy around that era running on x79 @ 1666 6-6-6-18-1t right now."
This was a tri channel run >
http://www.overclock.net/t/872945/top-30-3d-mark-1...
post #1054
IanCutress - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
Because Hyper ICs fell out of favor, motherboard manufacturers are now reluctant to spend time in optimizing the Hyper IC kits to work with their systems. Thus the kits often have to fall back onto default settings, and they sometimes do not work. As one set of ICs is phased out, and new ICs come in, the newer ICs get priority.Ian
PS. You'll find me on the overclock.net HWBot team :)
CherryBOMB - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I have 16gb of the fastest money could buy around that era running on x79 @ 1666 6-6-6-18-1t right now.well over $1000 invested. Each 6gb kit was over $450 - bought the extra to future proof to quad lanes today.
2x CMT6GX3M3A1600C6
1x CMT4GX3M2A1600C6
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
saturn85 - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
how about adding a folding on cpu benchmark with different memory speed?