Gskill Trident X 2667MHz Test

[bartman1973]

Gskill releases have been in full swing for several variations of memory since the Z68, x79 and now with the Z77 series of chipset from Intel. Variation of rams include the Ares, Ripjawsz, Sniper and Trident X series. This is on top of their value series rams that are still pretty good for entry level computing.


They are claiming world records from a well known website HWBOT. Several ovvrclockers and enthusiasts are pretty happy with what GSkill has to offer and they love putting them into extreme overclocking which involves liquid nitrogen.


Early part of last week, I received a package and I was pretty happy that I will have the chance to test one of their enthusiast level RAMs. Well I have to admit it, I a GSkill fanboy and to date I still own (in my Den) a number of Gskill Memory which include Ripjaws (X and Z) series , the black PI series which is still powering my X58’s, The Sniper series, and my all-time favorite - Perfect Storm which I do not have plans of letting go anytime soon!





Closer Look at the RAM


The box I received is small and when I opened it I was amazed that Gskill included a cooler for the RAM. These are the kind of items you would expect as I bet this 2667MHZ RAM is one of their enthusiast level DDR3 Memory.








The RAM was well protected and the divider in the box ensures that the RAMs inside will not move. Well I have to say kudos to the design of the box. I have seen this kind of design in their quad channel RAM for X79’s.





A sticker was also included (To give you bragging rights and let everyone know, without saying a word, that you use GSkill RAMs)





Initially, I was thinking that height will be a problem when using Tower cooling in your PC since they are pretty tall but upon checking the website, I found out the fins on the top can easily be removed. If you will be running them on stock rating, heat will not be a problem as when I tested the ram, I can hardly feel any heat.








Perfect Storm meets Trident X ! Removing the upper part of the memory made it smaller than the perfect storm by a few millimeters





The RAM was rated CL11. Well it doesn’t really matter nowadays. Starting on the x79’s the battle is more on the speed and tightening the timings is secondary. Below will be the testing rig :0 Well sort ! As I am just starting up here in SG, I still need to buy a lot of stuff like bench table, watercoling and powersupply. As you can see I borrowed the 24pin and 8 pin from my gaming rig!














The test that I will be doing today will be more of Aida 64 memory test which includes memory read, memory write, memory copy and memory latency. A maxmem test will be done as well as part of the test. Three tests will be carried out. First was loading the default setting of the board. Then manual adjustments will done on the board to make the system clock at the rated speed of the processor and the memory. The last test will be a fully overclcocked system.


Test Results.


Stock

























Overclocked ( 4.8Ghz / 2800 Mhz Ram speed still @ C11! )























Summary





Conclusion


Test results show that Ivy bridge is very capable of running high clock RAMs. I did not encounter any problem running the system at the rated speed. Overclocking the ram is pretty easy as well. I was able to reach 2800Mhz speed by simply adjusting some parameters including setting the voltage of the ram to 1.7. The board I used was pretty new to me also and bumping it up to beyond 2800 will give me post code “55” and I even had to reflash the BIOS twice as several reboots (while trying to overclock the system) corrupted the BIOS.


This is just the initial test and will be continuing to run more test come next week with the latest Gigabyte Z77X-UP4TH.


Given the scenario that I am still finding my way through the BIOS of the maximus genie (there are tons of options that you need to understand before achieving a stable system), the 2800Mhs clock for the gskill trident X is not pretty bad. The voltage I added is still good and the rams can easily accept. Bottom line, this product has a lot of potential and highly recommended for enthusiasts and even people who just starting to overclock their systems.


Stay tuned as I will be coming up with another round of test with a better cooling and with a diff type of board! Meanwhile here's trident X while waiting for the new set of board and processor!

[Neuromancer]

Latency didnt start on x79. And I have learned that AIDA is changing their memory test to fit x58/x79. version 3.0 will have a multi threaded memory test.

TBH I do not understand how single threaded tests perform well on dual channel tests... aida64 3.0 though should be out in time for piledriver though with its quad channel controller (fx FxFx)