Maximum Overclock

Getting the most out of a G.Skill TridentX 2933 MHz 8 GB kit isn't even really possible on air. Although Intel's latest has fantastic capabilities when it comes time to overclocking memory, CPU-quality issues persist as they did in platforms past. I still managed to get the sticks fully stable at 3400 MHz, which is an amazing overclock of 466 MHz. Getting there, however, did require that I drop the speed of my CPU fairly low. It also took a hefty BCLK overclock of a wee bit over 116 MHz, which required that I use a board with a PCIe slot locked to 100 MHz, as is provided by ASUS's MAXIMUS VI EXTREME. Doing so allows the BCLK to scale in ways not possible with slots that are in sync with the BCLK, as that would push the tolerances of some PCIe devices too far.

Performance metrics aren't fully capable of showing the potential performance available here because of reduced CPU speed, so I don't have any benchmarks to show you their performance. It is also worth noting that I do have other Haswell-based CPUs here, and not all of them will boot these sticks by just enabling XMP, although using lower dividers and increasing the BCLK does work pretty well with CPUs that cannot use the 2933 MHz divider.

I'll update the performance numbers for this kit once I find a common CPU speed that works with most kits that require a high BCLK, and after I figure out why performance with the 2933 MHz divider is so low. I do have several other highly capable kits here that may match the high BCLK performance this kit offers but am still investigating which one of those kits is faster overall. Not all of these overclocking boards have BIOSes ready for all DIMMs quite yet, but I am also writing this less than a month into the platform's launch. This situation has led to a lot more work when it comes time to get these reviews done, so I do plan to have a follow-up article specifically on overclocking with Haswell after I've had a chance to play with all the motherboards on today's market within the coming months--many of these boards are already in my possession.