ADATA 8GB 1600 XPG DDR3 Memory Review Version 2.0 (AX3U1600GC4G9-DG2)

With Sandybridge systems picking up sales momentum, many enthusiast users are considering a complete upgrade. There are a wide variety of manufacturers selling quality DDR3 memory kits and with current pricing, there really is no better time to buy. Purchasing a 4GB kit is certainly the cheapest option, but if you have greater multitasking demands and want peace of mind for the future then a 8GB kit could be a wise choice. Today we are looking at new ADATA XPG memory which offers a competitive price point and 4GB module density. This specific kit we are reviewing today operates at 1600mhz with 9-9-9-24 timings and has a supported voltage rating between 1.55-1.75. It will be competitively priced at under £100 when it reaches the United Kingdom very shortly. The big question, is this a cost effective, performance related choice you should be contemplating for your next system upgrade? The ADATA 1600mhz Gaming memory arrives in a colourful, tough plastic container which will offer good shipping protection. It is also ideal for retail store presentation as the product is on full view. One of the sticks is positioned at the rear of the box, with space for a third. This means the same packaging can be used for X58 triple memory configurations. ADATA have opted for a smaller heatspreader size which offers good heat reduction but will still work with the majority of oversized CPU coolers available on the market today. These are operating with 9-9-9 timings at 1,600mhz. The 2,000mhz memory from ADATA we recently reviewed was running with slightly looser timings of 9-11-9. ADATA are using Hynix H5TQ2G83BFR-H9C memory which is 44nm DDR3 featuring a decreased chip size via copper implemented triple metal layer and WN barrier metal techniques. This Hynix memory offers fully synchronous operations referenced to both rising and falling edges of the clock. While all addresses and control inputs are latched on the rising edges of the CK (falling edges of the CK), Data, Data strobes and Write data masks inputs are sampled on both rising and falling edges of it. The data paths are internally pipelined and 8-bit prefetched to achieve very high bandwidth. The heatspreaders are held together with two small screws and an adhesive backing. They are easily removed. The black PCB underneath looks great. Today, we are using the excellent Asus P8P67 Deluxe motherboard. We manually set the voltage to 1.65 in the Asus bios. The Asus motherboard has a simple one push button to achieve a comfortable, yet 'safe' overclock - many people buying a similar system would use this for an easy performance boost. In this case it configured our 2600k processor to 4388mhz via a 43x multipler. It also forced the memory to 1630mhz @ 9-9-9-24 timings. System validation is available over here. Next we attempted to overclock the memory, while keeping the processor at the same speeds. Using the Asus memory overclock section we forced it to 1900mhz. The system was initially unstable so we increased the memory voltage and started to adjust timings. Stability was only achieved by relaxing the DRAM RAS to CAS delay from 9 to 11. We also increased voltage to 1.67, a safe setting. System validation at these timings is available over here. Pushing the memory even further was possible, and we achieved 2000mhz, but it required relaxing the timings even more to 10-11-10, which ultimately gave less performance than when running at 1900mhz with 9-11-9 timings. We won't be using the 2000mhz setting in the review today. Test System: CPU: Intel Core i7 2600k @ 4,388mhz 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 Cinebench R11.5 64 bit 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 ADATA 1630 mhz 9-9-9-24 ADATA 1900mhz 9-11-9-27 1. Texturiser (1) 1.8 1.7 1.7 2. CMYK 1.9 1.9 1.9 3. RGB 1.8 1.8 1.8 4. Ink outlines 27.1 27.0 26.9 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 18.5 9. Mosiac Tiles 12.3 12.1 12.0 10. Extrude 154.2 153.7 153.3 11. Rough Pastels 10.8 10.7 10.6 12. Smart Blur 88.2 88.2 88.0 13. Underpainting 31.4 31.3 31.1 14. Mosiac Tiles 11.8 11.7 11.4 15. Spherize 2.2 2.2 2.2 16. Palette Knife 18.7 18.6 18.4 17. Sponge 36.5 36.4 36.2 18. Smudge Stick 11.3 11.3 11.2 Total: 459.2 457.2 454.8 Script times reduce by around 2 seconds when moving from 1333mhz memory to the ADATA running at around 1600mhz. When we move to 1900mhz, the time reduces further by just over 2 seconds. 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. Performance increases are really healthy when moving from 1333mhz to the higher settings on the Sandybridge platform. At 1900mhz the performance jumps significantly higher, with memory copy increasing from 21695 to 24063. 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 Memory bandwidth increases from 21 GB/s at 1333mhz to 23.5 GB/s at 1900mhz with 9-11-9 timings. Strong results indeed. 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. By increasing the memory bandwidth and efficiency the time taken to complete the overall render is reduced. This might seem like a small increase, but over the course of a day, this could amount to some significant savings. CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free. Even though Cinebench R11.5 is primarily a CPU intensive test, system bandwidth and efficiency can effect the scoring, slightly. Our scores improved when moving to the faster ADATA memory product. When overclocked to 1,900mhz the bandwidth increases, as does the overall score. MaxxMem2 PreView is a handy, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here Solid scaling and much as we expected. There are certainly benefits from overclocking the memory further than the rated specifications. In our reviews to this point ADATA memory has proven to be some of the most stable we have used. We were impressed with their 2000mhz 8GB kit and the 1600mhz 8GB version is no less impressive. What many people don't know is that ADATA actually supply memory for other leading companies, so their pedigree is not really in question. We particularly like this specific heatspreader design. It works with many of the oversized CPU coolers currently available on the market while offering good PCB thermals, even when pushed hard and overvolted. The 1600mhz 8GB kit overclocked very well, reaching 1900mhz with 9-11-9 timings and even 2000mhz with 10-11-10 timings. The more expensive ADATA 2000mhz kit runs natively at 9-11-9 timings so clearly the chips are a higher grade, which explain the additional cost. In regards to the pricing, the 2000mhz 9-11-9 kit costs around £140, while the 1600mhz variant should retail for around £100. Considering the 1600mhz version we reviewed today can overclock to 2000mhz with relaxed timings, it seems to be a very good deal. Pros: 8GB means a high level of future proofing with the option to double this at a later date high quality Hynix modules used 2000mhz is possible with relaxed timings Voltages supported right up to 1.75v small heatspreader design allows for many large CPU coolers to be used. Cons: Timings at 2000mhz need to be relaxed for total stability KitGuru says: for the modest cost, this is a hell of a deal.

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ADATA 8GB 1600 XPG DDR3 Memory Review Version 2.0 (AX3U1600GC4G9-DG2)

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