Testing Part Two: Overclocking
As with any overclocking, not only may your mileage vary but you may well kill whatever it is you’re overclocking. That won’t happen at 1.5v as the RAM is rated for it, but if you venture higher than that it’s a known risk, you can’t and shouldn’t try to warranty the RAM if it dies, as it didn’t die: You killed it.
This kit doesn’t have a warranty anyway and I’d be shirking my duties to my readers if I didn’t overclock it, so off we go! First I spent a bit of time to see how high I could get the ram at 1.35v and 8-8-8 timings. The answer to that is: Nowhere. Not, at least, to the next available RAM multiplier of 1800.
To get 1800-8-8-8 I needed 1.5v, and that same 1.5v allowed 1866-8-8-8, which is pretty nice for 1.5v. Below we have the benchmark results for that clock speed.
Results @ 1866-8-8-8-24 1.5v:
Eight seconds faster than 1600-8-8-8, not a bad gain for stock (stockish, anyway) voltage eh?
Wprime sped up a bit in the 32M test and slowed down a bit in 1024M. It’s not as memory intensive as SuperPi. Why it slowed down I couldn’t tell you.
Maxxmem really likes the new higher speed. A lot.
Next I loosened the timings to 9-9-9 while keeping the voltage at 1.5v, with those settings 2133MHz was possible. That is quite nice, few kits can do 2133MHz 9-9-9 at 1.5v.
Results at 2133MHz 9-9-9 1.5v
Being forced to increase the timings cut into the higher speed’s usefulness, but we’ve cut another few seconds off anyway.
Again 32M speeds up and 1024M slows down. Weird, but there you have it.
Maxxmem is happy, it likes the bandwidth associated with high speed more than it dislikes the delays caused by looser timings.
I spent some time plumbing the outer reaches at 1.65v (bye bye warranty. Not that I had one to begin with) and found that I could do 2200-10-10-10 and 2400-11-11-11. 2200-10-10-10 was slower than 2133-9-9-9, but 2400-11-11-11 was a bit faster.
Results at 2400MHz 11-11-11 1.65v
This is speeding right along for a kit rated at 1600. I’m impressed.
So is SuperPi, it shaved another two seconds off.
Even wprime is willing to admit (if grudgingly) that this is fast RAM.
Maxxmem’s love for MHz has been overcome by the looser timings. So it goes.
2600MHz did not fly, even at timings as high as 13-15-15. Oh well. All told I’m quite pleased with the overclocking this RAM can do!
