Performance Results

The above four images are screen captures from within the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe's BIOS. The first image shows the Patriot 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 Samsung, G.Skill, and Mushkin 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 and Samsung kits, and four sticks for the other two kits. Of course, the XMP profile for the Patriot PX538G2000ELK sticks does not use automatic settings, as this would have resulted in a significantly lowered operating speed, as I mentioned on the last page. The settings used reflect what was shown on the last page; I did manually adjust timings to match what the SPD profile says, and I also adjusted the CPU frequency to match the 3.9 GHz on all cores that the ASUS motherboard defaults to when XMP is enabled under traditional circumstances.

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 Patriot PX538G2000ELK sticks here are right in the middle of the pack with XMP enabled, and quite naturally, down at the bottom when using the 1066 MHz JEDEC profile. I actually expected the Patriot sticks to beat out the Mushkin XMP profile, but it seems that SuperPi prefers four sticks over two.

wPrime

wPrime is much more focused on CPU performance, but memory plays a role too, although timings are far more critical. Here, the Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit is right on top, most likely thanks to the "lowered" latency of using just two sticks. I suppose the rest of the tests should show the same as well, or completely blow that theory out of the water.

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. The results here are quite close to what SuperPi showed, but at the same time, here we have the JEDEC profile of the Samsung sticks beating out the XMP profile of the Patriot PX538G2000ELK sticks, and I'm at a loss to explain why.

AIDA64 Read Performance

Memory adjustments on the X79 platform affect Read performance more than Copy and Write performance. The performance offered here in this test by the Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit is much closer to what I was expecting based on speed of the DIMMs alone. The 2000 MHz Patriot kit didn't beat out the G.SKill kit, but at only 500 MB/s slower, it's not too shabby, at all.

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. With all four channels used, the performance gaps become much larger overall, and very clearly four sticks is faster than two. That said, the Patriot sticks do beat out the dual Samsung sticks by a fairly decent margin when the XMP profile has been enabled.

SiSoft Sandra Latency Performance

Latency Performance in SiSoft Sandra closely follows the trend seen in AIDA 64 with quad-channel kits, but again we are left with a different result from using just two sticks. Here the Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit wins out over all others, reporting a latency of just 22.3 nanoseconds. Perhaps this explains the top place finish in wPrime as well.

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 Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit with XMP enabled very nearly matches the Mushkin's JEDEC profile with twice the number of sticks, and very quickly steps out in front of the other dual-stick results.

HandBrake Encoding

HandBrake encoding testing followed the results given by wPrime, showing that sometimes timings are more important, but not always. HandBrake shows the Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit sitting in the middle ground, but at only five FPS slower than the best result, there's not much difference at all, about a 1% difference only.

CineBench Encoding

Cinebench encoding, on the other hand, provides a much different encoding workload, where it seems raw speed wins out overall. Cinebench really likes these Patriot PX538G2000ELK sticks, with the JEDEC profile beating out the other JEDEC profiles, and the XMP profile also out on top, leaving the Patriot sticks on top in both categories.

PCMark 7

PCMark7 provides a bit of a daily usage comparison, testing different parts of the system in different ways. Again the Patriot PX538G2000ELK sticks put out a top result, but the JEDEC profile was dead last.

Shogun 2 CPU Bench

We fired up the Shogun 2 DirectX 9 CPU Performance Benchmark for some game workload testing. We've updated all of our test results because previously we used an HIS HD5450 for testing memory, but we found that the results given might be a bit VGA-limited. With an XFX HD6950 2 GB card installed, we get a much better picture of what's going on, with the results mimicking what we say with SuperPi, and the Patriot sticks in the middle of the pack.

Of course, when using such an old kit in a very much new platform, it's clear that stock performance isn't neccessarily why you'd buy these sticks, although the Patriot PX538G2000ELK kit did manage to take the top result in a few tests.