youngpro

I had the pleasure of putting two contenders for the 4GB stick crown up against one another recently when I got a chance to take a look at the new GSKILL Trident 2000 8-9-8-24 kit and the MachX Armor 2000 9-9-9-24 kit.

Both of these kits perform very similar and are the new generation of 4GB sticks. I am not sure what IC these are, if anyone has any suggestion it would be great, when I get the MachX naked all I find is a blank IC.

MACHX naked


I am using a platform as follows:

Gigabyte P55A-UD7
Intel 870
Antec 1200OC and Corsair HX1000
Nvidia 8400GS

Both of these kits are not so great when you tighten the CL or TRCD, so I am focusing on the sort of clocks you would be running if you had them in your system. No point attempting 6-7-6 or 7-7-7 as these sticks are going to be sitting around 700MHz or below. You are going to be looking at these sticks if you have a power workstation perhaps and 1000 9-9-9-24 are very reasonable clocks for 16/24GB on a power workstation, but lets also look at what might be possible with this IC and what happens when we push it a bit further.

MACHX ARMOR 2000 9-9-9-24

Firstly looking at the MachX kit as I got them first, they are a new kid on the block and the sticks are actually quite nice to look at... They are rated at 2000 9-9-9-24 2T and 1.65v





7-9-7-24
800MHz

8-8-8-24
1000MHz 1.70v

9-9-9-24
1100MHz 1.70v
1125MHz 1.80v

I found these sticks acted like PSC in terms of voltage, they really did not like much past 1.7V but they did scale at 1.8V. Then in terms of scaling with cas and trcd I would say they are most similar to micron, cas definatly gave more increase in MHz than trcd, which is definatly not how a psc stick would performance.

Now we need to look at how these sticks perform under LN2. These tests were done with the sticks at -50 and using the voltages specified. I used a pass of 32m as the benchmark of stability here.

7-9-7-24
825 1.9v

8-8-8-24
1025 1.9v

9-9-9-24
1200 1.9v

I was quite blown away by the 1200 9-9-9-24 on 2x4GB, I though wow thats preety amazing.. I was even more shocked with what was to come.. As you can see though even with subzero cooling the 8-8-8 and 7-9-7 really is not where you would expect it. 1000 8-8-8-24 might be a nice 24/7 clock though if you have a kit that can achieve it.










GSKILL TRIDENT 2000 8-9-8-24

Next on the GSKILL kit, this kit falls under the gskill trident brand and you can feel the quality of the heatsink over some of the other brands that gskill produces... starting with air..



7-9-7-24
800 1.7v

8-8-8-24
975 1.7v

9-9-9-24
1125 1.7v
1150 1.8v

This again was fairly surprising getting ddr-2300 out of a kit of 2x4GB with only 1.8v on air! The gskill slips a little behind here on the 8-8-8-24 stables but gains in the 9-9-9-24.. so overall it is even so far..



Next moving onto the subzero results, the gskill were way more sensitive to temperature and only liked -30, but boy did they like it... all of a sudden the sticks really opened up and achieved some phenominal results!

7-9-7-24
825 1.9v

8-8-8-24
1025 1.9v

9-9-9-24
1250 1.9v

well i cant say i was expecting that, 1250mhz for 32m, 1275 for everest and getting to loop 11 of 32m at 1280mhz.. that is a little more than i was thinking when i set out...

1312MHz 2x4GB kit








So that basically decides it, on air hardly any difference, both brands will serve you very well, if you are crazy and want to push your 2x4GB sticks, the GSKILL really do open up with LN2.. and touching 1300mhz is something some psc sticks would be jealous of!

GSKILL TRIDENT 2000 8-9-8-24 + MACHX ARMOR 2000 9-9-9-24 SUBZERO

Of course I HAD to push 16GB subzero, it just wouldnt of been a youngpro ram review without doing so. to tell you the truth, this was one of the harder overclocking experiences i have had, i think the key is having a temp probe on each stick so you can ensure you have the right temperature to each stick, or it is easy for one stick to be +10 and one to be -100 without really realising... eventually i got there and was very satisfied and amazed to end with this result...

yep, 16gb pass of 32m at 1200mhz







will be back soon with more ram goodness

i have this over at XS but considering this is memory and thats what i4memory is all about, it was best i post it here also

eva2000

crazy nice James, this IS what i4memory is about

DDR3-2200-2300mhz with 4GB density modules is just amazing how far DDR3 has come

hope you're planning on some x58, 3x4GB and 6x4GB tests too - you sure have enough 4GB modules for it

youngpro

definatly looking to do 6x4GB but i am a bit concerned the older generation kingston sticks will drag the other four down! that being said, it will be interesting to see how a consumer motherboard handles this density of sticks...

i remember in my previous testing the only board i could get to run 18gb, 3x2gb and 3x4gb was the gigabyte x58 ud4p... i tried about 4 other boards without success..

Johnny87au

Nice results mate! even though i seen em on XS hehe , Cant wait till you try 12gb or even 16gb..

tuchan

That's wild James, top work indeed

See ya in a couple of weeks mate. If ya need anything let me know.

spoolindsm127

I'm a newb and I even gotta say that those results are hella impressive! Great work sir

youngpro

thanks for the comments guys, i love testing this sort of thing