Recently picked up some sets of DRAM and thought I’d do some comparison testing just to see what might happen as I am planning to soon build a Z77. Am using one of my current systems as the test platform and the specs are as follows:
Mobo - ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Performance (latest BIOS 1.30)
CPU - Intel 2500K
CPU HS - Zalman CNPS5X SZ
GPU - BFG GTX 285 OCX
PSU - Antec HCP- 1000 Platinum
OS/APPS - Pair 120 GB GSkill Sniper SSDs in RAID 0
Data - WD 750 GB 32GB Cache
Data - Seagate 1 TB 32GB Cache
Add on - ASUS PE9400 TV Tuner card
LCDs - Hanns-G 27.5 “ and AOC 24”
Originally put 16GB of Snipers in, and soon upgraded to 1866 Snipers (2 sets of F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR 4x4GB 16GB total) that has served me well since about July 2011. In addition to running tests on the 1866 sticks, I am playing with a set of 2133 CL9 16GB 4x4GB Snipers – Model F3-17000CL9Q-16GBSR and a set of 2133 CL9 32GB 4x8GB Ripjaws X, Model - F3-2133C9Q-32GXH.
To be honest I hadn’t really expected a lot of difference between the performances of the sticks at basically the rated specs and there really wasn’t. I did however see in the brief tests I’ve run so far on the sets that the performance rise from 1600 and going up is significant enough (to me anyway) to warrant buying higher freq sets.
I set the system up w/ a nominal 4.6 multiplier on the 2500K and plan further testing at 4.8 (and prob up). At the different levels I tested, I ran MaxxMem 4 times at different levels of activity and averaged the Memory Copy Score (as reads are generally lower and Writes are generally higher.
Starting with the 1866 set (4x4GB)
Mbytes/Sec GB/Sec
@1600 8-9-8-28 21,168 or 20.67
@1600 9-9-9-28 20,520 or 19.58
@1866 9-10-9-28 25,130 or 24.54 (with CR @ 2T)
@1866 9-10-9-28 25,401 or 24.80 (with CR @ 1T)
@2133 10-11-10-28 26,252 or 25.63
The 2133/CL9 16GB Snipers at stock speed and timings were a bit better:
@2133 9-11-10-28 27,108 or 26.47
Then I went to run the 32GB set (2133/CL9 Ripjaws X), which is when the s*** hit the fan. I had found earlier , that the Fatal1ty mobo maxed at 2133 in the preset DRAM freq and you can’t go and set the freq manually, so I loaded the Ripjaws Xs and enabled XMP and nothing, the BIOS saw the XMP timings but wouldn’t load them – nothing but default 1333. After trial and error and using all the advanced timings by hand, I finally got the sticks going at rated base timings and even slightly tighter, then got a hand from GSkill Tech (Thanx again) and tightened a few of the advanced timings (more experimentation to go, but at this point:
The 2133/CL9 32GB Ripjaws X at stock were a hair slower (prob due to looser stock timings)
@2133 9-11-11-31 26,700 or 26.07
Then rather than continue with the speed, I played some with the 32GB, among other things I set up a couple different RAMDrives (RAMDisk and Primo Ramdisk Pro) and experimented with them some, redirecting all the temp and cache files from Firefox and IE to them (which really did speed up browsing, also set up a version of FireFox on the RamDisk (another performance gain), loaded some utility apps into the drive (again big speed up), then installed Open Office in the RAM Disk and opened a good size spreadsheet in Calc, which was unreal. That testing was somewhat short lived as I was still wanting to try different things in the BIOS, and those that use Ram Drives know, when you shut down the system it seems like it takes forever to save everything in the drive to a harddrive (next on that will be try shutting down all apps and copy the entire RAM drive to a USB3 thumb drive (believe it’ll go much faster and then can copy back after startup).
Next opened a new VM via Oracle VM Virtual Box, and loaded a copy of the Win8 Developers Beta, and ran it within Win7……….all very nice, and everything just ticking away as Sweet as could be, may even pull Win8 off the rig I have it on and just run it here in the VM.
(oh, and I did send a email support request to ASRock asking if they ever plan to update the BIOS to accommodate 8GB sticks and get XMP to work, as well as to open up the DRAM freq to manual settings, etc, and no response a few days now)
UPDATED 4/18/2012 - finally got a response from US Support (after 2 emails to them and a pair to their HQ (both support and their Info section)) that the original support request was sent to their HQ last week, and still haven't heard a word about it..
Mobo - ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Performance (latest BIOS 1.30)
CPU - Intel 2500K
CPU HS - Zalman CNPS5X SZ
GPU - BFG GTX 285 OCX
PSU - Antec HCP- 1000 Platinum
OS/APPS - Pair 120 GB GSkill Sniper SSDs in RAID 0
Data - WD 750 GB 32GB Cache
Data - Seagate 1 TB 32GB Cache
Add on - ASUS PE9400 TV Tuner card
LCDs - Hanns-G 27.5 “ and AOC 24”
Originally put 16GB of Snipers in, and soon upgraded to 1866 Snipers (2 sets of F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR 4x4GB 16GB total) that has served me well since about July 2011. In addition to running tests on the 1866 sticks, I am playing with a set of 2133 CL9 16GB 4x4GB Snipers – Model F3-17000CL9Q-16GBSR and a set of 2133 CL9 32GB 4x8GB Ripjaws X, Model - F3-2133C9Q-32GXH.
To be honest I hadn’t really expected a lot of difference between the performances of the sticks at basically the rated specs and there really wasn’t. I did however see in the brief tests I’ve run so far on the sets that the performance rise from 1600 and going up is significant enough (to me anyway) to warrant buying higher freq sets.
I set the system up w/ a nominal 4.6 multiplier on the 2500K and plan further testing at 4.8 (and prob up). At the different levels I tested, I ran MaxxMem 4 times at different levels of activity and averaged the Memory Copy Score (as reads are generally lower and Writes are generally higher.
Starting with the 1866 set (4x4GB)
Mbytes/Sec GB/Sec
@1600 8-9-8-28 21,168 or 20.67
@1600 9-9-9-28 20,520 or 19.58
@1866 9-10-9-28 25,130 or 24.54 (with CR @ 2T)
@1866 9-10-9-28 25,401 or 24.80 (with CR @ 1T)
@2133 10-11-10-28 26,252 or 25.63
The 2133/CL9 16GB Snipers at stock speed and timings were a bit better:
@2133 9-11-10-28 27,108 or 26.47
Then I went to run the 32GB set (2133/CL9 Ripjaws X), which is when the s*** hit the fan. I had found earlier , that the Fatal1ty mobo maxed at 2133 in the preset DRAM freq and you can’t go and set the freq manually, so I loaded the Ripjaws Xs and enabled XMP and nothing, the BIOS saw the XMP timings but wouldn’t load them – nothing but default 1333. After trial and error and using all the advanced timings by hand, I finally got the sticks going at rated base timings and even slightly tighter, then got a hand from GSkill Tech (Thanx again) and tightened a few of the advanced timings (more experimentation to go, but at this point:
The 2133/CL9 32GB Ripjaws X at stock were a hair slower (prob due to looser stock timings)
@2133 9-11-11-31 26,700 or 26.07
Then rather than continue with the speed, I played some with the 32GB, among other things I set up a couple different RAMDrives (RAMDisk and Primo Ramdisk Pro) and experimented with them some, redirecting all the temp and cache files from Firefox and IE to them (which really did speed up browsing, also set up a version of FireFox on the RamDisk (another performance gain), loaded some utility apps into the drive (again big speed up), then installed Open Office in the RAM Disk and opened a good size spreadsheet in Calc, which was unreal. That testing was somewhat short lived as I was still wanting to try different things in the BIOS, and those that use Ram Drives know, when you shut down the system it seems like it takes forever to save everything in the drive to a harddrive (next on that will be try shutting down all apps and copy the entire RAM drive to a USB3 thumb drive (believe it’ll go much faster and then can copy back after startup).
Next opened a new VM via Oracle VM Virtual Box, and loaded a copy of the Win8 Developers Beta, and ran it within Win7……….all very nice, and everything just ticking away as Sweet as could be, may even pull Win8 off the rig I have it on and just run it here in the VM.
(oh, and I did send a email support request to ASRock asking if they ever plan to update the BIOS to accommodate 8GB sticks and get XMP to work, as well as to open up the DRAM freq to manual settings, etc, and no response a few days now)
UPDATED 4/18/2012 - finally got a response from US Support (after 2 emails to them and a pair to their HQ (both support and their Info section)) that the original support request was sent to their HQ last week, and still haven't heard a word about it..
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