Single dGPU Gaming

For our single discrete GPU testing, rather than the 7970s which normally adorn my test beds (and were being used for other testing), I plumped for one of the HD 6950 cards I have.  This ASUS DirectCU II card I purchased pre-flashed to 6970 specifications, giving a little more oomph.  Typically discrete GPU options are not often cited as growth areas of memory testing, however we will let the results speak for themselves.

Dirt 3

Dirt 3 on HD 6950

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite on HD 6950

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider on HD 6950

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs on HD 6950

While Single dGPU doesn't ever seem to show many differences between memory speed, Dirt 3 did not seem to like our Patriot memory, although we are talking sub <1%, and could thus be statistical variation at work.  We do four runs of the D3 test so we do not end up with an outlier, but sub <1% is not anything to get worked up about.

IGP Gaming Tri-GPU CrossFireX Gaming
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  • mfenn - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    Expanding upon this point: the data in Anandtech articles is always top notch, but it is becoming more and more obvious that there are two tiers of reviewers when it comes to delivering insight. Anand, Brian, Ryan, and Jarred write good conclusions based on their data and don't care about any blowback from the manufacturers. Dustin and Ian seem beholden to the manufacturer's PR departments and just parrot whatever talking points they're given. It's really disappointing.
  • Gen-An - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    And who exactly do you think is going to be interested in a kit like this, other than overclockers? The review fit the product and the target audience. It's not for general users, never will be, and doesn't need to be reviewed as if it were.
  • Gen-An - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link

    Patriot has changed the ICs on this kit without changing the SKU. I have two of the 2x4GB kits that only have 8 chips on a single side of the PCB and none on the other, and use Hynix H5TQ4G83MFR 4Gbit ICs (the same ones that are on those DDR3-3000+ kits) and clock accordingly. One kit I bought but took back was like these in the review, double-sided sticks with 16 chips per stick (8 per side) and using a relatively new IC, Hynix H5TQ2G83DFR, which can't clock as high as H5TQ2G83CFR unfortunately.
  • IanCutress - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link

    With the demand for MFR seemingly strong, and other companies other than Patriot going after 2400MHz and up, I guess going to CFR was more a financial choice.

    Companies seem rather reluctant to tell me which ICs they use, and popping a heatspreader off is no mean feat nowadays, with accidents happening regularly: http://forum.hwbot.org/showpost.php?p=207472&p...

    That's compounded by the fact that sometimes the IC # is removed and replaced with the company name over and over. Any suggestions?
  • Gen-An - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    CFR would have been preferable to DFR, which as you review and this one show, doesn't like going higher than 2600: http://www.techstation.it/articoli/patriot-viper-i...
  • chekk42 - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link

    Ian, whatever happened to low latencies? I'm currently running a 1600MHz CL7 kit which I bought 2+ years ago, but I only ever see CL9 (and up) kits in reviews or for sale these days.
  • joos2000 - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link

    Lower latencies doesn't yield the same performance returns as upping the clock frequencies, that's why.
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-...
  • ShieTar - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    The reason is that defining latency as a multiple of clocks is rather silly with a large range of clock speeds available concurrently. What your CL7 means is that you have a latency of 4.38 ns (7/1600MHz). The fastest latencies in other clockings available are:

    1066 CL7 => 6.56 ns
    1333 CL7 => 5.25 ns
    1600 CL6 => 3.75 ns (But only on 2GB kits)
    1866 CL8 => 4.29 ns
    2133 CL9 => 4.22 ns
    2400 CL9 => 3.75 ns
    2666 CL10 => 3.75 ns
    2800 CL11 => 3.93 ns
    3000 CL11 => 3.67 ns

    So as a matter of fact, all kits tested in this review, except for the ADATA ones, have shorter latencies than your own set.
  • Gigaplex - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    You missed the part where they asked for low latency 1600 and you quoted a 1600 at CL6 without saying where it's from. Like they said, most 1600 kits come at around CL9 which is around 5.63ns. This matters somewhat when Intel CPUs such as the i7 4770K are rated at 1600, any higher and you're running out of spec.
  • ShieTar - Tuesday, November 19, 2013 - link

    Not sure how I "missed" that, it doesn't say anything about a 1600 kit at CL9 in the question :
    " I only ever see CL9 (and up) kits in reviews "
    Well, most kits in reviews and announced sales are probably not 1600 at this point in time. In the review above you see 5 kits at 2400+, with only a single 1600 kit thrown in for completeness. So I assumed that the original poster was expecting DDR3 2400 to also come with CL7. Sorry if that assumption was incorrect.

    The quoted CL6 kits are "OCZ Reaper HPC Edition" (OCZ3RPR1600C6LV4GK) and "Super Talent Chrome Series" (WB160UX6G6). I think both are actually discontinued, because you can buy a 2400 CL9 set and just run it at 1600 CL6. As shown above, you could even buy a 2400 CL10 set and get a little lucky and still run it at 1600 CL6 (same latency as the tested 1866 CL7)

    So sure, DDR3 1600 kits are rarely sold with very low latencies today, that's because low-latency kits are validated and sold at higher frequencies. This does not matter very much, since all kits come with a JEDEC setting to run 1600 initially, and everybody who knows he needs better latencies can lower them by hand to the actual achievable latency. Kits sold as 1600 are really mainly for people looking for cheap memory. Which is fine, as most reviews show little to no relevant gain from faster memory for most tasks anyways.

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