Tested, Yet Not Guaranteed

One of the other things that sets the Ballistix Tactical Tracer DIMMs apart from others is that they boot at a default profile of 2666 MHz without any intervention, making them a perfect match for all the latest platforms from both Intel and AMD. Since Coffee Lake, Skylake-X, Ryzen, and Threadripper all have 2666 MHz memory profiling support right out of the box, these Ballistix Tactical Tracer sticks are the perfect choice for those building a new system to make the most of stock memory speed support.



Here's a look at what I found when I booted into my OS upon installing the sticks into my X299 test system; 2666 MHz with 16-18-18-38 timings and 1.2 V applied.


One thing I did find weird was that the sticks ran with a boosted voltage (to 1.25 V from 1.2 V, a small but real difference) when enabling the XMP profile. I didn't notice any other changes. Odd. I guess it might be because if you find you need to enable XMP, then perhaps a voltage boost wouldn't hurt. I did find JEDEC profiles for 2400 and 2133 MHz too, so you can set those dividers if you like, and proper timings will be applied (unless your motherboard is being a dork).



When it comes time to look at overclocking, I took a rather simple approach. I left all settings at stock, boosted voltage to 1.35 V, and just adjusted the memory divider. This presented me with a max bootable speed of 3466 MHz, although it wasn't fully stable with the 21-24-24-48 timings that were applied. I then dropped the clocks to 3200 MHz, a step above what the higher-speed sticks from this series support right now. I also adjusted the timings to match what the sticks support by default at 2666 MHz and booted the system. You can see screenshots from that above. I ran my complete testing suite without any issues at all at 3200 MHz. These sticks could have been sold as 3000 MHz ones. That's how it was with the older Ballistix sticks from past generations as well. Perfect!