1. Introduction2. G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX3. Testing Methodology and Setup4. Kitguru Photoshop Benchmark5. AIDA 646. SiSoft Sandra7. 3D Studio Max 20118. MaxxMem 29. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

A short while ago we reviewed the G.Skill Ripjaws 4GB DDR3-2133mhz kit which was retailing for an incredibly low £50 inc vat. Today we are looking at the latest G.Skill 1600mhz RipjawsX bundle which is an 8GB kit retailing for £59.15 inc vat. Is this an ideal upgrade for your new system build? Has G.Skill made any compromises?

As we said before, G.Skill are peppering the market with quality products at extremely competitive price points. While the 4GB RipjawsX kit offers faster speeds, many people are feeling that 4GB is the minimum memory count for a new system, with a wider audience opting for 8GB configurations. The kit we are reviewing today is rated at 9-9-9-24 latencies @ only 1.5V.

• Capacity: 8GB (2 x 4GB)
• Speed: DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
• Cas Latency: 9
• Timing: 9-9-9-24
• Voltage: 1.5V
• ECC: No
• Buffered/Registered: Unbuffered
• Multi-channel Kit: Dual Channel Kit
• Features: Designed Specifically for Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs and P67 Platforms

The G.Skill RipjawsX 8GB DDR3 1600mhz kit arrives in a plastic blister pack to highlight the colourful heatspreader design within a retail store environment. We really do like the appearance of these products.

The heatspreaders are not an oversized design which will appeal to many enthusiast users who wish to use a larger heatsink for their latest build. They don't interfere with the fitting of a Noctua NH D14 for instance.

The heatspreaders are adhered with sticky thermal tape and a simple catch mechanism at the top. Using the tip of your finger to force them apart is easy enough, then the clip mechanism can be opened. The PCB design is pure black which always looks great.

Today we are using the excellent Asus P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard.

The memory was detected and the correct voltage of 1.5V was applied by default. Overclocking memory with today's Sandybridge motherboards isn't quite as comprehensive as it was in the past due to Sandybridge platform changes.

Validation is available over here. We tried to tighten the RAS and other timings but the system wouldn't boot, even with extra voltage. We did manage to get the Command Rate to 1T however.

By using the built in profiles on the Asus board we set it to 1866mhz, but the system wouldn't boot. We loosened the timings to 10-10-10-30 and applied some extra voltage and the system booted.

Validation at this higher speed is available over here.

Test System:
CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: AMD HD6850
Hard Drives: Intel 128GB SSD (Boot), Samsung 2TB (storage), Crucial 128GB SSD.

Comparison memory:
No Brand DDR3 1333mhz 4GB 9-9-9-24

Software:
SiSoft Sandra
Adobe Photoshop CS5 64 bit
3D Studio Max 2011
Aida 64 Extreme Edition
MaxMemm

This version of the script has been thoroughly tested on Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CS4 and is compatible with Photoshop 7. It is important to document however that different versions of Photoshop give different end results. Adobe have been fine tuning the program over the years and enhancing specific filters and algorithms for better performance (some filters were rewritten during the CS2 time period). This means ultimately that comparing times with users running other versions of Photoshop is not going to give consistent results.

All results were gained from Adobe Photoshop CS5 64bit exe on Windows 7 64 bit ultimate and are marked in seconds. Lower times are better.

KitGuru PS Bench 1(4)	Standard 1333mhz 9-9-9-24	G.Skill 8GB RipjawsX 1600 mhz 9-9-9-28	G.Skill 8GB RipjawsX 1866mhz 10-10-10-30
1. Texturiser (1)	1.8	1.7	1.7
2. CMYK	1.9	1.9	1.9
3. RGB	1.8	1.9	1.8
4. Ink outlines	27.1	27.0	26.8
5. Dust & Stratches	2.9	2.7	2.7
6. Watercolor	25.6	25.4	25.2
7. Texturiser (2)	1.8	1.7	1.7
8. Stained Glass	18.9	18.8	18.3
9. Mosiac Tiles	12.3	12.1	12.0
10. Extrude	154.2	153.7	153.4
11. Rough Pastels	10.8	10.7	10.6
12. Smart Blur	88.2	88.3	88.1
13. Underpainting	31.4	31.3	31.0
14. Mosiac Tiles	11.8	11.7	11.4
15. Spherize	2.2	2.2	2.2
16. Palette Knife	18.7	18.6	18.3
17. Sponge	36.5	36.5	36.3
18. Smudge Stick	11.3	11.3	11.2
Total:	459.2	457.5	454.8

Memory bandwidth has a reasonable impact on Photoshop CS5 performance, although the differences would be hard to see under real world circumstances. We recorded a time of 454.8 seconds at the overclocked 1866mhz 10-10-10 settings.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Scaling is good, showing improvements in bandwidth when moving from generic 1333mhz to the GSkill ram at 1600mhz and 1866mhz.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Overclocking the memory to 1866mhz really helps improve the overall score in SiSoft Sandra from over 21 GB/s to over 24GB/s

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a KitGuru custom created scene at 1920×1080 and record the time taken, lower is better.

Increasing the memory bandwidth helps improve rendering times in 3D Studio Max. In this test it seems like a small improvement, but with bigger tasks, the differential will increase proportionally.

MaxxMem2 PreView is a handy, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here

Benefits yet again are easily seen when more bandwidth is available by raising the clock speeds.

We have reviewed several 8GB 1600mhz DDR3 kits in recent months and the G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RipjawsX is the first one that we have managed to get one hundred percent stable at 1866mhz. G.Skill are very aggressive in the UK right now and this kit is being sold for only £59.15 inc vat from ebuyer.

Our testing has shown that upgrading to 1600mhz memory will give real world performance benefits within a balanced system and that this particular configuration is overclockable to 1866mhz if you increase the voltage a little in the bios (1.65V). At 1866mhz the performance benefits are more noticeable, as our real world and synthetic testing has highlighted.

On an appearance level, these are going to look great in a system with a window panel. On a more practical level it also won't obstruct the fitting of larger CPU coolers, such as the Noctua NH D14. Always an important point to make, especially for the enthusiast audience who look to push their systems to the limit.

Yet again, at this price, the kit is impossible to fault and the fact that there is some overclocking headroom is just the cherry on the cake. At under £60, a high performance 8GB memory upgrade has never been more affordable.

Pros:

• very inexpensive
• looks great
• overclocks to 1866mhz with a minor voltage bump

Cons:

• At this price, its impossible to fault.

Kitguru says: G.Skill do it again, breaking the price barrier to help users on a limited budget to upgrade their system.

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