G.Skill SNIPER Series 1600MHz CL9 8GB Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅31-03-11
Conclusion

Those who once had their doubts about moving to Sandy Bridge due to the recognised flaw reported at the end of January have in the past month had their fears soothed thanks to the new B3 stepping motherboards now available in all stores world-wide. For many - not just motherboard manufacturers the past few months would have seen major disruptions in sales and the like, hopefully now things are starting to pick back up. G.Skill have been wise to launch their new Snipers series immediately after B3 stepping motherboards became available to the consumer.


So how well does the Sniper DDR3 kit perform on the Sandy Bridge platform? Well, the stock CL9 performance is pleasing. Against its foes it stands out as a solid performer across the board. We put the 1600MHz Sniper kit under review today against a selection of other popular Sandy Bridge RAM from Kingston, G.Skill and OCZ. Whilst the difference in results between each kit within the games benchmarking tests could be deemed nominal, synthetic tests revealed that the Sniper kit was a serious contender and not to be underestimated.

The only concern I have with this kit was the instability at getting it moved up from 1600MHz to 1866MHz. With such a low voltage I was hoping that this would give enough headroom for us to possibly consider 2133MHz, but even 1866MHz seemed to have its issues sadly. Overclocking isn't the 'be-all-and-end-all' though. Many gamers (or even enthusiast) won't even be modifying their RAM anyway and we have to remember that this particular series is marketed at this target group. I can confidently say that stock performance and CL8 modification, this kit offers gamers a reliable, solid solution.

Priced at £85 inc. VAT the Sniper DDR3 kit for the P67 chipset is a superb buy. It'll be one of the lowest priced 8GB CL9 kits currently available, at gamers finger-tips. I can well understand that many are stuck in a dilemma - decided whether to go with a 4GB or 8GB kit but thanks to the pricing here 8GB is a much more affordable option to go with.

Pros
+ Good overall performance
+ Affordable 8GB kit
+ Aggressive styling
+ Extremely low voltage
+ Short heatspreaders

Cons
- Overclock unstable




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