Tech Reaction

I recently received a set of G.Skill F2-9600CL5D-4GBPI DDR2 to test out on AMD’s AM2+ platform.  According to G.Skill, each kit is hand selected from the batch and represent G.Skill’s highest bin Powerchip IC.  Exciting… =)

I’m not very big on chit chat so lets get right to the testing after seeing a shot of the ram.

System Specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE

Asus M4A79 Deluxe

G.Skill F2-9600CL5D-4GPI (1200 5-5-5-15 2.1v)

PC P&C 1200w Turbocool

Thermalright Ultra-eXtreme 120

Testing

First up, I tossed the timings and voltage to spec, left everything else auto and ran some Prime 95 blend to stress the ram with the IMC.

Next I tested scaling with voltage

800 4-4-4 1.8v                          900 4-4-4 1.8v                     960 4-4-4 1.9v

980 4-4-4 2.0v                   1032 5-4-4 2.1v                          1066 5-5-5 1.8v

1100 5-5-5  1.8v              1150 5-5-5 1.9v

1200 5-5-5 2.0v              1226 5-5-5 2.0v

Conclusion

This has got to be one of the easiest and most versatile sets of ram I have oced with on AM2+.  The fact that it exceeds some of the 2×1g  “overclocker” sets I have used makes it that much sweeter. I personally am not a fan of  high voltage, and a relatively low-voltage set of memory doing speeds that require far more voltage with other sets of memory is a very welcome change indeed.  All in all, this set gets a big thumbs up and appears to compliment the AM2+ platform quite well. It’s nice to see with the majority of the manufacturers making the jump to DDR3 that G.Skill did not forget about the enthusiasts that still use DDRII. My only complaint would have to be the tall heatspreaders causing interference with the inner slots and high performance heatsinks such as the popular TRUE 120 and Xigamtek 1284 on AMD platforms where the heatsink can not be oriented in a different direction.  For users of heatsinks like these, you will most likely be forced to remove the heatspreaders on the memory if you wish to use them in your boards ‘primary’ memory slots.

On a final note, I would like to add that the Asus board I tested this on has some teething issues with ram clocking at the moment with the 955 CPU.  I’m quite sure that this is bios related and may have hindered the full potential of this set of ram.  Unfortunately, I did not have a different board to test with at present time due to me getting a little frisky in the overclocking department with my other AM2+ board.

Many thanks to G.Skill for the review sample.  If you’re looking for the best 4GB kit of DDRII available on the market today, look no further than the 4GB PC2-9600 PI’s, which can be found here at Newegg.