Performance Results

The above two images are screen captures from within the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe's BIOS. The first image shows the G.Skill 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 that what is reported in the screens above.

Our testing involves using only the automatic settings applied by the BIOS, as ASUS has vetted these modules in this ASUS board already, and this is how most users will run the modules. We have found over the years that very few people set secondary timings, and we always endeavor to bring results that exactly match what the end user will see on their own systems, so no manual entry of secondary timings has been made at any point, even when overclocking. ASUS has approved the modules to run in configurations varying form just two sticks, all the way to eight sticks, which would require two kits, and fill every available DIMM slot on the board.

We have tested the modules both with the JEDEC profile, as well as the XMP profile, and the results are below. We have begun our comparison using the Mushkin modules we showed in the SPD screenshot above, as well as on the last page, which have also been tested with their own 1333 MHz JEDEC profile, as well as their XMP profile. The numbers below reflect performance results with four modules installed at all times.

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 G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH wins here both with its JEDEC profile, as well with XMP enabled, even with the much higher timings in the XMP profile.

wPrime

wPrime is much more focused on CPU performance, but memory plays a role too, although timings are far more critical. Here, the G.Skill memory is just behind the Mushkin memory, but still remains fairly close even with the vastly different speeds and timings.

WinRAR

WinRAR makes use of both CPU and memory again, and the test results highlight how raw speed wins out overall, putting the G.SKill memory on top with both JEDEC and XMP profiles.

AIDA64 Read Performance

Memory adjustments on the X79 platform affect Read performance more than Copy and Write performance. Here the JEDEC and XMP profiles put the G.Skill kit ahead by roughly 700 MB/s in the AIDA 64 Read Performance test, even though AIDA 64's tests don't fully utilize all four channels on the Intel X79 Express platform.

AIDA64 Latency Performance

The gains in latency are pretty linear too, with the G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH kit winning out overall again.

SiSoft Sandra Bandwidth Performance

SiSoft Sandra's memory test suite provides a slightly different workload than the AIDA 64 tests do, so we've employed it for testing too. With all four channels used, the performance gaps become much larger overall, and the G.Skill kit still takes the top spot.

SiSoft Sandra Latency Performance

Latency Performance is SiSoft Sandra closely follow the trend seen in AIDA 64, again with the G.Skill memory on top, providing nearly 3% less latency in both JEDEC and XMP configurations.

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. Here the G.Skill kit wins out by nearly ten GB/s, a quite significant number.

HandBrake Encoding

Handbrake encoding testing followed the results given by wPrime, showing that sometimes timings are more important, leaving the Mushkin memory with its lower timings winning in both JEDEC and XMP configurations.

CineBench Encoding

Cinebench encoding, on the other hand, provides a much different encoding workload, where it seems raw speed wins out overall. G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH kit is again on top, without a doubt.

PCMark 7

PCMark7 provides a bit of a daily usage comparison, testing different parts of the system in different ways. Even in daily performance testing, the G.Skill Ripjaws Z F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH wins out, but only marginally so.

Shogun 2 CPU Bench

We fired up the Shogun 2 DirectX 9 CPU Performance Benchmark for some game workload testing. The results are quite close here, but that's partially due to our vastly underpowered HD5450. Even so, there are some differences, but it's really questionable as to which kit wins. At the same time though, there is a difference between the JEDEC and XMP profiles, so there are some gains to be had by employing XMP-certified memory on the Intel X79 Express platform.