The Packaging

Here we can see the packaging which OCZ keeps rather simple:

Here is a close up shot of the sticks and the specification of the modules.

With these particular DIMMs, clearance will be a non-issue as any intrusive intrusive heatsinks will easily fit over them.

Here is one last shot of the RAM installed in the board. No fan is included, so we did not actively cool these modules during the review.

Continue to page 2 for testing and conclusion. >>

I would like to point out first that G.Skill has a current supported motherboard list for these modules consisting of the following boards, ASUS M4A89TD PRO, ASUS M4A89GTD PRO and ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. For this purpose, although we did try them out on an ASUS Crosshair IV Formula and they appeared to work fine, we decided to stick with the officially supported ASUS M4a89TD PRO. Also an important note, currently the only officially supported CPU’s are Phenom II X6 Thubans, which we stuck with for official support reasons.

I would also like to point out at this time that after doing some research, GIGABYTE has recently posted on their site a revision 2.1 890FXA-UD7 that claims to support the 8 gig variant of these modules at they’re rated specs. Unfortunately, we have not been able to acquire one of these boards thus far for testing and G.Skill has not updated there site with any info on this.

Let’s take a look at the modules and what you get.

The G.Skill Flares:

Included with these particular modules is a fan that attaches to the module’s heatspreaders. It unfortunately uses a 4 pin molex connector; not too excited about that.

As we can see here the box clearly states the motherboards officially supported and tested by G.Skill.

As usual with all ram reviews I like to point out possible clearance issues so users are completely aware. These particular DIMMs will indeed interfere with some large heatsinks.

You will want to be sure that whatever you are using for cooling can be oriented both ways to ensure clearance.

Continue on for Overclocking, Testing and the Conclusion. >>

Recently we received a new memory kit from Crucial that is part of their Ballistix line. We decided to test this kit on the AMD platform to see how they would fare. Considering that AMD can be picky with certain modules, we found this particular set quite interesting. Let’s take a closer look shall we?

Based on the target consumer and price range of these modules, we decided against testing with SuperPi 32m and instead opted to test ultimate stability using Prime 95 (Blend) for a minimum of 3 hours per setting. We also opted to use a Deneb quad core CPU versus Thuban so aso to cover the bases for all users. Those using Thuban may see larger gains due to an improved IMC, and we felt that may impact/skew results for the majority.

Test Setup:

• AMD Phenom II x4 965 BE Retail
• Crucial Ballistix (2×2GB) DDR3 1600MHz (p/n BL2KIT25664FN1608)
• Asus Crosshair IV Formula 890FX
• Corsair HX 850w
• Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit

Let’s take a look at the test rig briefly and go over a couple of things.

As we can see here, commonly found with many of today’s performance memory modules incorporating tall heat spreaders, DIMM interference with larger heatsinks can be a problem. Everyone has their own opinions on this, and mine is that the heatsink manufacturers are intruding into a “no fly zone”.

Personally, I purchased a heatsink that took this issue into consideration with the Prolimatech Megahalems, and clearance is a non-issue with it.  So you may want to keep this in mind when choosing a heatsink.

Here we can see that the system is all set and ready to go on the test bed.

Overclocking & Testing:

My particular methodology for testing memory geared towards the average user on the AMD platform, is to use Prime 95 in Blend test mode. This particular mode stresses both the CPU and Memory combined and will usually fail with even the slightest hint of memory instability. Especially around the 2 1/2 hour point in the test, which is why we opted for 3 hours minimum.

Prior to Prime 95 stability testing, Memtest86+ was used to set some of the sub-timings for optimal stability. tRRD-5, tWR-10,  tWTR -5 and tRTP -5 were found to be optimal for this particular set. We have enclosed CPU Tweaker 1.3 in all of the screenshots for anyone that would like to match our timings for testing.

To start, we set the baseline testing at CAS 8, 1600MHz with 1.65v and the CPU running at stock speeds.

Next up is baseline testing at 1600MHz, CAS 8 and 1.65V as before, but this time we overclocked the CPU and Northbridge. The purpose of this is to put more stress on the memory and the system in general, as many times memory is known to pass stability at artificially higher speeds until you introduce a total system overclock.

Now for 1700MHz, CAS 8 and 1.65v. At this point the memory is scaling without the need for a voltage bump.

1720MHz, CAS8 and 1.65v is still scaling without the need for more voltage.

1760MHz, CAS 8 and 1.65v was the maximum that we could achieve without scaling voltage higher with the memory.  We’ll need to bump the voltage slightly to continue increasing the clock speed.

Now we’re at 1800MHz, CAS 8 with 1.675v this time. At this point we are starting to see scaling without increasing voltage beginning to taper off.

At 1840MHz, CAS 8 with 1.70v we’ve reached the point where adding voltage is becoming fruitless and will just create more heat.

That concludes our CAS 8 testing.  We settled at 1846MHz with 1.70v, which was more than likely the limit of the IMC, rather than the RAM itself.  So at this point we decided to deviate from spec. AMD is well known for performing best with lower latencies in the CAS 6 range, so I wanted to feel the memory out and see how it liked the tighter timings. In the past, I have found that just because a particular set of ram has a higher speed/timing spec, this does not mean that it has the ability to be tightened up at lower speeds. This particular set of ram had no problem doing so however.

Here’s 1333MHz at CAS 6 with 1.70v.

Impressively, 1600MHz at CAS 7 can be achieved with only a slight voltage increase over the stock rating. This would likely be what I would choose for 24/7 usage based on the balance performance, heat and voltage.

While attempting to max out our memory, we managed to squeeze out 1880MHz at CAS 9 with just 1.725v. Although this is interesting in the fact that the Crucial Ballistix modules were able to exceed what many sets of ram can not do on AMD quad cores with prime stability, the higher latency required to achieve such speeds does not offer great performance.  As mentioned, we recommend sticking to tighter timings on the AMD platform whenever possible to maintain optimal performance.

Crucial Ballistix Software:

Let’s take a look at an interesting feature that these particular modules offer.  Here we can see that we can actually monitor the temperatures of the modules, thanks to Crucial’s new addition of thermal sensors within the heatspreaders. A practical use for this feature could be to determine if there are dead spots in case airflow or possibly discover a faulty DIMM that’s overheating.

Here we can see the SPD data of the sticks, including the speed, default timings and voltage. This can also be viewed using CPU-Z’s SPD tab, but it’s always nice to have this information available.

I should mention that to install this utility, you will need to have the .NET Framework v4.0 installed.

Unfortunately, at this time this software is not compatible with these modules on the AMD platform.  Crucial assures us that this is a known issue and they are working on a release that will resolve this issue as we speak.

Conclusion:

This particular Crucial Ballistix kit works extremely well on AMD-based platforms and they are quite versatile in regards to the speeds and timings that they can run. We found that with little effort we were able to get these sticks clocking well without having to invest hours of time in to tweaking.  I am however disappointed by the 2T command rate that was needed for these sticks as the user will lose some performance from this timing. The lack of the software support for the AMD platform regarding the temperature utility was also unfortunate, but again, Crucial did mention that they would be rectifying this issue. I might also mention that no where on the packaging does Crucial mention anything about the software supporting there sticks, which I find odd considering it’s the only way to get the temperature readings from their new thermal sensors.

Minor issues aside, for users looking for a set of memory that just plain works on AMD without too much fiddling around, I think Crucial has really a winner here! Add to that the fact that they are very attractively priced and can be had for just over $110USD at various e-tailers and you can consider us sold!

The Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600MHz kit receives the TechREACTION.net Silver Silicon Award!

Recently the good folks at OCZ sent us a set of budget ram to review.

Now I know most of you hardcore overclocker’s are saying “pfft…” however, with budget RAM sometimes and often many times there can be found diamond’s in the rough.

With that said, let’s see what you get.

As we can see, the packaging is simple as to be expected with a budget set of memory.

The platform we chose to test these sticks today consists of the following.

Test Setup

GIGABYTE P55-UD4P

GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 SOC

Intel Core i7 860 (ES)

PC power and cooling 1200w Turbocool

Megahalems 1156 cpu cooler w/Scythe 2000 rpm fan

OCZ DDR3 PC3-10666 Platinum (7-7-7-20)

Windows 7 32 bit Operating System

The system

Testing Methodology

Due to the nature of these modules, I find that running Super Pi 32m on sticks that are targeted for budget users is sort of pointless and only belongs in a “high end kit” review as 32m does not necessarily denote 24/7 stability, and more so raw overclockability. That said, I chose prime 95 blend as the stability/stress test.

I would like to note at this point that I did seem to have a problem with overclocking the sticks when using the 1333 divider. This is an interesting issue that I have seen before on a completely different platform. They were able to achieve stability at there default clock speeds, however, for overclockinging purposes we stepped down to the 1066 divider and chose to raise the base clock. With that info disclosed, let us see what these sticks can do.

1366 7-7-7 1.65v

1360 7-7-7 1.65v

1400 7-7-7 1.65v

1440 7-7-7 1.65v

1480 8-8-8 1.65v

At this point I dropped the divider down one more notch to test CAS6 operation

1080 6-6-6  1.65v

Conclusion

All in all this is a decent set of RAM for the money if the specified speed is your target range. Unfortunately, these are not the diamond in the rough for the extreme crowd and won’t get you any overclocking awards.

However, for the price of just over $100 USD, it’s hard to argue with the speed, timings and reliability that these sticks can give you, especially when you factor in OCZ’s excellent customer service and warranty.

The OCZ PC3-10666 Platinum Low Voltage earns the TechREACTION Silver Silicon Award!

You can purchase this kit here at Newegg.

Thanks to OCZ for the sample!

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2010/05/23/review-ocz-ddr3-pc3-10666-platinum-low-voltage-memory-kit/feed/ 2 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/30/opportunity-of-a-lifetime/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=opportunity-of-a-lifetime http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/30/opportunity-of-a-lifetime/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 19:30:42 +0000 Chew http://www.techreaction.net/?p=729 I was recently offered a choice by a certain individual……

You take the blue pill and it’s over, you wake up tomorrow and continue life as you know it and you believe what you want to believe.

You take the Green pill and I show you a world you never could have imagined in your wildest dreams where limits and boundaries are meant to be broken.

I obviously chose the Green pill

I will save the long drawn out speech for after the results…..So lets get right to the results….

I would like to state that in no way did I push this CPU to the limits in 2D….I had tuned my hardware for 100% efficiency prior to the trip to Austin.  I don’t use software tweaks, its not my thing and quite honestly I really don’t need them as I’m a firm believer that hardware tuning is greater than any software tuning can be.

System Configuration:

Gigabyte 790FXT-UD5P

AMD ??? CPU

PC P&C 1200W Turbo Cool + 750 Silencer

2×1GB Micron D9 GTR

2×2GB OCZ Animals

2 x Radeon HD 4890’s (3D)

Radeon HD 2600 Pro (2D)

Prototype Kingpin Pot

Prototype Phantom Pot by Aaron  Schradin

As always with me, I do not validate single cores, this is a 4 core validation also denoting I could have benched higher had I chosen to.

I ran some 3D with my 2×1GB set.

Not happy with the result and knowing I could squeeze a few more points out, I swapped to my OCZ 2×2GB sticks which I prefer for benching 3D.

All in all I had a great time and would like to take a moment to thank some people.

Special thanks goes out to Simon Solotko for being a believer.

Special thanks goes out to Vince AKA K|ngp|n.  It was an honor to bench next to you and an honor to use your prototype pot

This thing is a beast and is going to make benching LN2 so much more relaxing

Special thanks goes out to Aaron Shradin for letting me test the prototype acrylic see through LN2 pot.

I think this is the first piece of hardware I have ever used that looks cool and works 100%.

I also think this may be one of the best pots ever made in the pound for pound category….holding at -190 no load and -189.8 loaded.

Special thanks goes out to the rest of the AMD crew who was more than hospitable and helped to make this event possible right down to the engineers.

It was an honor to get invited and I truly hope I did not disappoint.

For those who may ever get a chance like this themselves, the best advice I can give you is to seize the moment and own it as this opportunity truly only comes once in a lifetime…

What this means is they are guaranteed to work on your AM3 platform and users do not have to buy an extra stick of ram in a 3×2g kit that may or may not work well  at rated speeds and or timings.

Essentially, OCZ was nice enough to cater to the AMD crowd and take the guess work out of the equation for AMD users.

The stars of the review.

Test setup

MSI 790FX-GD70 and Gigabyte 790FXT-UD5P

OCZ PC3 12800 1600LVAM4GK (1600MHz 7-7-7-24 1.65v)

PC P&C 750w Silencer

Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme and Prometia Mach 1

Testing

Because the integrated memory controller (IMC) is so finicky, I decided to test true stability with this set of ram in two modes that most will benefit the average user. ( 1333 6-6-6 and 1600 7-7-7)

MSI board on air, timings set 7-7-7-24-28-1T with everything else set to Auto.

1333 6-6-6                               1600 7-7-7

Next I tested OC potential and again, due to the finicky IMC, I used 32m PI to verify that the ram was still stable.

6-6-6 1333+1.71v             7-7-7 1600+1.71v

After finding my max memory speed I decided to push the CPU a little more to see how performance scaled with a multitude of benchmarks.

Having reached the max I could get on air cooling, I wanted to see how the sticks would perform on my Gigabyte board under phase change and hard core memory benching, so I tackled 32mPI to test efficiency.

Conclusion

Well, what can I say?  It appears OCZ has a winner here.  The ram fits in all banks even with popular heat sinks like the TRUE 120 and Xigmatek 1284EE.  This RAM has great overclocking potential and what makes it even sweeter is they do so with reasonable voltages that can be used  for 24/7 configurations and still feed the need for those hardcore benching sessions.  If I had to find one fault with this ram, it would be the availability as searches for it turn up slim results at best.  Luckily, you can get this kit at Amazon for a steal; looks like they have them in stock.

I’d like to thank OCZ Technology for the review sample.  If you’re looking for a nice set of memory that’s guaranteed to work well on your Am3 platform, look no further than the OCZ1600AM4GK.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/19/ocz-pc3-12800-1600lvam4gk-amd-optimized-kit-reviewed/feed/ 11 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/18/gskill-f2-9600cl5d-4gbpi-ddr-ii-reviewed-on-am2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gskill-f2-9600cl5d-4gbpi-ddr-ii-reviewed-on-am2 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/18/gskill-f2-9600cl5d-4gbpi-ddr-ii-reviewed-on-am2/#comments Mon, 18 May 2009 18:06:22 +0000 Chew http://www.techreaction.net/?p=566 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.

]]> http://www.techreaction.net/2009/05/18/gskill-f2-9600cl5d-4gbpi-ddr-ii-reviewed-on-am2/feed/ 1 http://www.techreaction.net/2009/04/07/gigabytes-ma790fx-ud5p-ddr-ii-board-reviewed-chew-style/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gigabytes-ma790fx-ud5p-ddr-ii-board-reviewed-chew-style http://www.techreaction.net/2009/04/07/gigabytes-ma790fx-ud5p-ddr-ii-board-reviewed-chew-style/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:10:52 +0000 Chew http://www.techreaction.net/?p=280 The way you will see me do reviews here will differ from the norm. You will never see me do a review at stock speeds…..There are plenty of review sites that already do that……What I do is start where they leave off, the overclocked and extreme overclocked results……Reviews for Overclockers by Overclockers.

If a product line has a prior known weakness I will exploit it, in this case Gigabyte’s AMD boards have not been to ram clocking friendly so I decided to put it to the test.

Before we get to the review part I would like to make some comments about Gigabyte concerning AMD boards.

When I arrived back in the OC scene my impression was that Gigabyte AMD platforms had a bad rap. Bucking the odds I picked up a one of they’re 790GX  boards  for a  firsthand experience as I am not one to follow the majority and have to see things from my own perspective. The board was far from the picture that had been painted. Granted it had its issues as do many other motherboards but still was/is a solid performer. It was my return to AMD and the 790GX  Gigabyte board that got me alot of recognition that I have recently received. I would also like to state that I do not work for gigabyte however on more recent boards I have been working with them very closely on the bios’s. With that said enter the MA790FX-UD5P.

System setup

Gigabyte MA790FX-UD5P

AMD ES CPU

Cellshock  2×1gig  SPD  rated 4-4-4-12 @ 1000

2x 4850’s crossfire/ 2x 4890’s crossfire

PC P&C 750w

Picture Show

The E sata bracket bundled is preety nifty and I thought it worthy of mentioning.

Air Stability/Benchmark Testing  and ram clocking all tossed together.

I decided to throw a little cold at it to see how it held up for some 3d benching

2 x 4850’s crossfire                2 x 4890’s crossfire

Final thoughts

This board has come along way from the original bios I was working with in very short time. Ram clocking is great, layout is great. There are no longer cold boot issues, If you over clock ram to hard it will refuse to boot but a simple reset of bios and going into bios profiles page and loading last known good settings saves you a lot of time. All in all this board gets a big thumbs up and hopefully the 790FXT can follow suit soon……..

Those looking for a rock solid board but not wanting to shift to DDR III should look no further than the MA790FX-UD5P as this is hands down the best DDR II Phenom II board I have used to date. If I had one gripe it would have to be the color scheme as I am more partial to the 790FXT color scheme.