Performance
Performance has been tested on two platforms as memory kits in the comparison are standard size and simply won’t fit onto ASRock X299E-ITX/AC motherboard. For Ballistix Sport LT tests has been used mentioned ITX motherboard while for two other memory kits the ASRock X299 Taichi XE which you could see in our previous reviews.
In the comparison are four memory kits which were working in quad channel mode. Other memory kits are the Ballistix Elite 4x16GB DDR4-3000 ( dual rank ) and Patriot Viper 4 4x8GB DDR4-3733 ( single rank ). Fourth result is an overclocked but stable DDR4-4000 CL20-23-23-48 1N 1.35V using presented in this article Ballistix Sport LT memory kit.
Both motherboards have the latest BIOS/UEFI. Also test OS so Win10 Pro x64 has the latest updates.
For 3D tests was used EVGA GTX1080Ti graphics card at default settings. I can’t forget about the i9-7900X processor which has integrated quad channel memory controller.
Since all is clear about test setup then let’s take a look at the test results.
AIDA64 benchmark is showing us pure bandwidth. It’s sometimes hard to compare it in real-life work and for that we will use other benchmarks. Looking at the bandwidth itself, the Ballistix Sport LT performs as expected considering quite low frequency comparing to other memory kits. Its performance is good and more than enough for most users. Once we set higher frequency, bandwidth is going up and what is amazing, we could pass 100GB/s without any special settings when memory was at DDR4-4000. It’s not so easy to make it on a standard size DDR4 memory.
Memory write also looks good comparing to other memory kits. It’s lower at XMP settings but again difference between memory kit settings is quite big. At the same frequency all of the tested memory kits provide similar performance. It’s also good sign as regardless of memory package, we can count on similar performance as long as settings are the same. Both ASRock motherboards perform well in the memory bandwidth tests.
Memory copy test results are a bit different. Even though memory frequency plays big role here then memory design is clearly affecting bandwidth. The only dual rank memory kit so the Ballistix Elite, even at DDR4-3000 settings is providing performance better than single rank DDR4-3733 memory kits. Only highly overclocked Sport LT memory could beat its result. We have to remember that dual rank memory kits are not overclocking so good so they won’t really reach so high frequency as single rank memory kits, even based on the same memory IC.
SuperPi 32M reacts quite good on memory performance. We can see differences up to 30 seconds what is already significant in this test. On the other hand when we compare memory frequency then it doesn’t look bad and even DDR4-2666 memory shows respectable results.
In rendering all memory kits perform well. There is no big difference between them in the Cinebench R15 but we still can say that higher frequency memory achieves the best score. If we are thinking about memory for more professional work then capacity will be almost always better option than higher frequency. Popular benchmarks barely ever use more than 2GB RAM.
At the end VR benchmark from Futuremark so VRMark. It’s quite demanding benchmark but on both platforms everything works great. Once again we won’t really see the difference between memory kits but also here we can see that higher frequency memory offers better performance so higher frames per second. How much FPS more we will get in games depend on each title. Sometimes it’s nothing, sometimes it’s up to 10% more.
If we pick RAM for gaming then I guess it’s best to decide on something in reasonable price and if we wish something good for work then depends on used programs, higher capacity may give us more than high frequency. There is no clear answer what memory is better. What we can confirm is that Crucial Ballistix series are offering perfect balance between good performance, high stability and reasonable price.
There are always users who want some more so on the next page we can take a look at the overclocking of the Ballistix Sport LT DDR4-2666 SODIMM memory. It’s really worth it as results are impressing.
