G.Skill TridentX Review: 2x4GB at DDR3-2666 C11-13-13 1.65V
by Ian Cutress on October 28, 2012 12:00 PM ESTPortal 2
A stalwart of the Source engine, Portal 2 is the big hit of 2011 following on from the original award-winning Portal. In our testing suite, Portal 2 performance should be indicative of CS:GO performance to a certain extent. Here we test Portal 2 at 1920x1080 with High/Very High graphical settings.
With Portal 2 on IGP we seem to hit a ceiling very early on in our testing, around the 2400C11/2133C9 range. After this the frame rate levels out, suggesting that something else in the system is the limiting factor.
Batman Arkham Asylum
Made in 2009, Batman:AA uses the Unreal Engine 3 to create what was called “the Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever”, awarded in the Guinness World Record books with an average score of 91.67 from reviewers. The game boasts several awards including a BAFTA. Here we use the in-game benchmark while at the lowest specification settings without PhysX at 1920x1080. Results are reported to the nearest FPS, and as such we take 4 runs and take the average value of the final three, as the first result is sometimes +33% more than normal.
Batman: AA is still the main beneficiary of faster memory speed in our IGP testing, and the jump from 2400 C10 to 2666 C11 does seem to make a difference (even if it is only 0.75 fps out of 58.25).
Overall IGP
Taking all our IGP results gives us the following graph:
The only kit that gets the performance increase predicted by MemTweakIt is Batman:AA. There is no doubt that out of the kits tested that the 2666 C11 2x4 GB kit performs the best, but it is hard to argue for the kit that costs twice per GB than the other kits except in an extreme overclocker scenario.
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Denithor - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Seconded.While it's kinda nice to know the RAM companies CAN produce this level of product, for 99.999% of even your audience (the true computer geeks) these products are a useless waste of cash.
I would much rather see more in depth reviews of other components, RAM speed is just so unnecessary in the overall performance of the system.
Tech-Curious - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
I think reviews like this one are useful precisely because they show, in exhaustive detail, that high-performance RAM is wasteful.Granted, a lot of us don't need in-depth reviews to know that, but FWIW, I'll toss this article in my bookmark folder and link it whenever I need to demonstrate to someone that they should buy cheaper RAM.
mpdugas - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Jeepers, why all the hate?Gen-An - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
No idea. If it's not for some people, fine, move on. Why they even bother wasting their time reading and replying to a review on a product they feel is "pointless" is beyond me.Beenthere - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
Unless people have more money than brains no one really should be paying a premium for RAM with a frequency higher than 1866 MHz. as there is nothing of substance to be gained from it - as countless tests with real applications confirm. The bogus RAM tests that exaggerate the benefits of higher frquency RAM may dupe the gullible, but those with more PC knowledge know better than to be deceived.saturn85 - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
add a folding on cpu benchmark should be great.Gen-An - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Ugh, you got the single-sided sticks with Hynix H5TQ4G83MFR. Most enthusiasts prefer the double-sided sticks with Hynix H5TQ2G83CFR ICs as they have more headroom than their 4Gbit counterparts. On the other hand, I have a kit of 4x4GB Trident X 2666 and I can't run all 4 sticks at 2800 C11 with stock voltage, though I haven't tried binning the sticks individually. People hate the Trident X 2400C10 sticks when they're single-sided Samsung.Beenthere - Sunday, February 17, 2013 - link
Only gullible sheeple think paying hundreds of dollars for RAM that offers no tangible improvement in system performance is a wise decision.Quote:
"Moving up to 2666 C10 obviously has the advantages of the lower command rate."
Hint: C10 is NOT the Command Rate which is either 1T or 2T