Test System
Motherboard MSI X79 Big Bang X-Power II
CPU Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
Power Supply ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler Corsair H100
CPU Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
Power Supply ANTEC High Current Pro 1200W
Hard Drive Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler Corsair H100
Memory kits on test:
G.SKILL ARES 16GB 9-11-10-28 2133MHz
Patriot Division 4 Viper Extreme 16GB 9-11-9-27 1866MHz
Corsair Vengeance 16GB 9-10-9-27 1866MHz
G.SKILL RipjawsZ 16GB 9-10-9-28 1866MHz
Overclocking
Above are the SPD settings of the memory kit in today's review.
Enabling XMP saw the timings and frequency correctly set to 9-11-10-28 at 1.65v.
Overclocking the ram was as easy as raising the multiplier a notch. This gave us a blistering 2400MHz. We did try lowering the timings at this frequency somewhat but sadly without any notable success. 1T was also unachievable but putting the kit back to 1600MHz we managed to lower the timings a little to a respectable 8-8-8-20 so whatever your preference, be it latency or bandwidth, the ARES kit can cater for both tastes. For our run of benchmarks we ran the kit at the maximum overclock of 2400MHz.
Let's see how these results translate to performance...
