Memory Performance Results

Test System

I am using a fairly decent CPU overclock for all testing because greater CPU overlocks allow for greater memory performance increases to be properly utilized. I have picked many different benchmarks that show these differences, but not all workloads are going to see the same gains as these hand-picked benchmarks show. To show the increases, I started with two different memory kits, one from Samsung and one from Patriot. The Samsung kit is a 1600 MHz kit that features normal JEDEC timings for its speed; it is rated at 11-11-11-28-1T. The second kit is a much older high-performance kit that was meant to be used with P55 chipsets but missed out on full support with a SandyBridge CPU, since those CPUs didn't support the Patriot kit's 2000 MHz XMP speed with 9-10-9-27-3T timings natively. IvyBridge differs from SandyBridge in many ways, but one of the most important changes for gamers and overclockers is the addition of many more memory dividers, such as 2000 MHz, which makes this old kit useful again with IvyBridge; it wasn't matched to any of SandyBridge's default multipliers. I have spent several months testing these kits with various boards and both have worked great. I also test with a single ASUS DirectCUII HD 7970 3 GB video card at an overclock of 1050 MHz for the core and 1500 MHz for the memory. This helps eliminate any sort of GPU bottleneck that might be introduced while, at the same time, showing to be sensitive to memory performance changes. Whether this is due to extra CPU or memory load is not known, or relevant. Let's take a look at what performance increases the Kingston kit offers:


Initial boot-up with XMP enabled was pretty easy, although I had to set secondary timings manually. Two XMP profiles are available on these sticks: one for 2133 MHz and one for 2400 MHz. Unlike the HyperX Genesis 10th Anniversary sticks that had both profiles use the same voltage, the 2133 MHz "Extreme" profile on the Kingston HyperX Beast sticks is rated at 1.6 V, a wee bit lower than the 1.65 V of the other "Enthusiast" profile. You, then, have a lower-voltage option if you end up with a CPU memory controller than cannot handle 2400 MHz. The Genesis sticks ran a bit hotter, but the larger heatsink of the HyperX Beast kit seems to pay off in spades, with the sticks barely even feeling warm to the touch by, maybe, sitting three or five degrees above ambient in my open test bench.

There is not much else for me to say at this point, except to mention that since the stock XMP profile for these sticks is exactly the same as for what the HyperX Genesis sticks support, the performance is pretty much even between the two kits, with a couple slight variations here and there. I booted into my pre-installed OS and managed to complete all testing without much fanfare—as expected. The next couple pages hold both system-oriented and 3D-oriented benchmark results for the kits. As is now the norm for me, I'll let the numbers do the talking, although it's going to be a very familiar oration this time around.