Performance Results

The above five images are screen captures from within the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe's BIOS. The first image shows the Exceleram module's offered profiles, including the primary as well as secondary timings that the module uses depending on which profile is enabled. This handy screen can help users manually set timings, but it's also worth mentioning that simply selecting and enabling "XMP" in the ASUS BIOS will automatically set most of these timings, but we did find that a few of the timings were different than what is reported in the screens above with some sticks. I've also included the same screenshot from the Patriot, Samsung, and G.Skill sticks, so we can see the obvious differences and similarities in timings.

My testing usually involves using only the automatic settings applied by the BIOS, as this is what most users will do as well, so the results that follow should be able to be replicated by anyone with the same components. I have tested the different modules with the primary JEDEC profile, as well as the XMP profile for sticks that offer it, and the results are below.
The numbers below reflect performance results with two modules installed for the Patriot, Samsung and Exceleram kits, and four sticks for the other three kits.

SuperPi

SuperPi has been a standard in memory clocking in enthusiast circles for many, many years. Being highly sensitive to timing and speed adjustments both on the CPU and on the memory, SuperPi is also good for stability testing for those just benchmarking. The Exceleram kit ended up in 4th place in this test, not too bad considering the actual frequency.

wPrime

wPrime is much more focused on CPU performance, but memory plays a role too, although timings are far more critical. Here we are met with a similar result, mostly based on raw speed.

WinRAR

WinRAR makes use of both CPU and memory again, and the test results highlight how perhaps quad-channel mode can be a hinderance to performance. WinRAR prefers the tight timings offered by the Exceleram ERB300A kit.

AIDA64 Read Performance

Memory adjustments on the X79 platform affect Read performance more than Copy and Write performance. 2133/2000 MHz kits are on top here of course; 4th place for the Exceleram ERB300A kit is exactly as expected.

AIDA64 Latency Performance

AIDA64's latency test shows very similar results as it did on the bandwidth side of things, which is to be expected.

SiSoft Sandra Bandwidth Performance

SiSoft Sandra's memory test suite provides a slightly different workload than the AIDA64 tests do, so we've employed it for testing too. The Exceleram ERB300A kit is right in the middle here, based on speed and the number of sticks.

SiSoft Sandra Latency Performance

Latency Performance in SiSoft Sandra closely follows the trend seen in AIDA64 with quad-channel kits, but again we are left with a different result from using just two sticks. The Exceleram kti took the top spot here, not too surprising considering the CAS 6 settings.

SiSoft Sandra Cache Performance

The SiSoft Sandra Cache test works not only the memory, but also the CPU cache, highlighting how memory performance affects not just the memory itself, but also how your CPU operates. The Exceleram ERB300A kit is right in the middle here.

HandBrake Encoding

HandBrake encoding testing followed the results given by wPrime, shows that sometimes timings are more important, but not always. HandBrake results are as expected, matching WinRAR testing quite closely.

CineBench Encoding

Cinebench encoding, on the other hand, provides a much different encoding workload, where it seems raw speed wins out overall. Here we got the unexpected, with the Exceleram kit taking first spot again.

PCMark 7

PCMark7 provides a bit of a daily usage comparison, testing different parts of the system in different ways. Of course, with such linear results in other testing, the second-place win here for the Exceleram ERB300A kit is not surprising.

Shogun 2 CPU Bench

We fired up the Shogun 2 DirectX 9 CPU Performance Benchmark for some game workload testing. Again we are greeted with the expected results.

Not exactly the best results, but the Exceleram kit did manage to take the top spot in a couple of tests. Of course, Exceleram has intended these sticks to be overclocked, so that's where all the fun should be, anyway.