Four High-End Quad-Channel DDR3 Memory Kits For X79, Reviewed

[xtreme5]

amazing memory super duper speed!

 

[animalosity]

lmao @ boletus. Finally someone gets it. Also for those who are "hardcore" gamers, I promise you, you can't tell a difference in anything over 60 FPS on most native 60 hz monitors, so just throwing this out there for you to feel bad about later. My $180 AMD 1100T runs games just as well as your $1000 SB-E series because games don't use HT for one and 2, well theres no games out there that even use 4 cores much less 6 cores or 12 threads. Feel free to off yourself now for spending that much on something that makes Zero difference. Have fun taking a mortgage out on your PC.

 

[fb39ca4]

[citation][nom]billybobser[/nom]board supports quad channel, a bazzilion gb's of ram, bla bla.Tests it on games using no more than 2gb, and not suffering a memory bottleneck.Notice no difference.Conclusion, unless you know you're really going to need 30+ gb of memory, and actually do have a bottlneck.2x2gb 1600's is going to be ample.On the other hand, the format that does have memory bandwidth problems is AMD, on phenoms and on APU (primarily because of shared resources on APU, but on phenoms because I guess their memory controller is poopzilla)[/citation]
But what about all of those people that just *have* to play Crysis while periodically checking in on their WOW game, open 100+ tabs in their web browser at a time, and simultaneously run a photorealistic render in the background?

 

[jn77]

I think this technology is still too expensive:

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL10Q2-64GBZL
Item #: N82E16820231508
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy

ASUS Rampage IV Extreme/BF3 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard
Item #: N82E16813131803
Return Policy: Limited Replacement Only Return Policy

Total : $1,199.00

+

Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor BX80619i73930K $599

= Approx $1,800 ( if I reuse everything else I have (Case, PSU, Video Cards, Har Drives, SSD's)

I might think about it when it is all available for about half that price.

 

[Guest]

I put 64GB on my RIVE and my mem usage stays at about 5GB. I could do it so I did it!

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]Crashman[/nom]Since Chris has a 64GB set, I'll ask if he's willing to use it in a RAMDISK article[/citation]
Woot!

 

[robert3892]

Your voltages are wrong on page 1 of this review. X79 voltages for memory kits are at 1.5 volts even the Corsair kit mentions this:

http://www.corsair.com/dominator-gt-with-dhx-pro-connector-1-5v-32gb-dual-channel-ddr3-memory-kit-cmgtx8.html

 

[robert3892]

For those who believe the CPUs are too high way in price then wait for the i7 3820 which should be released in the 1st quarter of 2012

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]robert3892[/nom]Your voltages are wrong on page 1 of this review. X79 voltages for memory kits are at 1.5 volts even the Corsair kit mentions this: http://www.corsair.com/dominator-g [...] mgtx8.html[/citation]No, the article is right, take a look at the CPU-Z XMP values before you start believing what marketers tell you. The modules even have 1.65V written on the heat spreaders

 

[Guest]

I think that overall the review supports the view that the generic $80 16GB kit is by far the best value of all. Given the at most marginal benefit seen with the other, significantly more expensive kits, unless you are competitively overclocking you wont see any real world difference in performance.

 

[dalethepcman]

I know this was a test on memory speed so you wanted to use the king of current cpu's, but could we get a similar article done on a llano and bulldozer so users can see the difference memory speed makes on those systems?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]dalethepcman[/nom]I know this was a test on memory speed so you wanted to use the king of current cpu's, but could we get a similar article done on a llano and bulldozer so users can see the difference memory speed makes on those systems?[/citation]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/llano-apu-memory-performance,3017.html

 

[e56imfg]

Doesn't lower timings mean faster performance?

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]e56imfg[/nom]Doesn't lower timings mean faster performance?[/citation]Normally yes, but sometimes it's not measureable. And sometimes when you're comparing two different sets of memory, the timings you don't see are the ones hurting performance.

 

[pnorman]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]How much of the benefit is DDR three over DDR two? I mean yeah you can tell me DDR three is faster than DDR two and I'll believe you, but what's the real world performance differences. I mean outside of video editing is there any difference, and by what I mean is would there be noticeable difference, hell I even let you go a dual channel DDR two and applied channel DDR three overclocked, and I want to see if there's any real world noticeable difference.[/citation]

The biggest advantage to DDR3 a user is likely to see is cost. I think you would see some performance differences between DDR3 and DDR2. The kits compared here are well past the point of diminishing returns.

More memory is more important than memory speed. The more data your OS can cache the better. I have 16GB in both my machines, and use it all. 8GB seems to be the optimum amount for most power users. It's pretty easy to use more than 4GB with a couple games open.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]hyuijkl[/nom]The article seems supports the same basic premise we've since at least the bclk limited 1155. Even with the 125 and 166 straps added to LGA2011 there is still too little base clock manipulation available push memory very far.[/citation]Uh, there's now a DDR3-2400 multiplier. The CPU's memory controller simply couldn't take that high a frequency at reasonable voltage levels.