X-bit labs

DDR3-1600 SDRAM: Technological Breakthrough or Marketing Trick? (page 2)

Category: Memory

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 08/21/2007 | 06:54 PM ]

New Overclocker Memory Kits

Super Talent W1600UX2G7

Since Super Talent was the first overclocker memory maker to start using Micron chips for their high-speed DDR3 SDRAM we would like to begin our discussion with their DDR3-1600 memory kit.

Super Talent W1600UX2G7 kit consists of two DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) memory modules, 1GB each. The kit is shipped in a standard plastic casing, which contains the modules themselves and a paper flyer with some general words about the advantages of DDR3 memory from Super Talent.

The modules themselves look a little unusual, they have chips only on one side of the PCB. However, this isn’t surprising at all, as they are built using 1Gbit micro-chips.

As a result, the black aluminum heat-spreader transferring the heat off the chips is stuck only on one side of the modules. The other side is an empty PCB surface that bears a sticker with the modules marking. This sticker contains info on product part number, capacity, nominal frequency, timings and chips manufacturer.

Super Talent guarantees that W1600UX2G7 modules are operational at 1600MHz frequency with 7-7-7-18 timings and 1.8V voltage. In other words, to reach the claimed frequency the manufacturer suggests using 20% voltage setting. The complete specification of this solution looks as follows:

The manufacturer claims that these memory modules are pre-tested on Asus P5K3 Deluxe mainboard before getting into the market.

The modules SPD reads the following:

As we see, the ensure compatibility Super Talent sets in SPD the default chip specifications at which they should work with 1.5V voltage.

As for the actual potential of the Super Talent W1600UX2G7 kit, our practical experiments showed that it is only a little better than what the specs claim. These memory modules could run stably at the following maximum frequencies (with different timings and default 1.8V voltage):

As we see, with timings set to 7-7-7-18 the modules remained stable only at 1632MHz, while with less aggressive timings of 9-9-9-24 the frequency increased only to 1652MHz. However, at their default speed of 1600MHz these modules could run stably not only with 7-7-7-18 timings, but also with better timing setting of 7-6-6-18.

Voltage increase has pretty big effect on Super Talent W1600UX2G7 overclocking results. Once we set the voltage to 2.1V, we could hit 1760MHz frequency with 9-9-9-24 timings and 1672MHz frequency with 7-7-7-18 timings without losing stability.

However, the obtained results, are still a little bit disappointing. The thing is that the very first Super Talent W1600UX2G7 memory kit samples that got into lucky overclockers’ hands could hit 2GHz speed and there is sufficient evidence of this fact. However, the memory kit that arrived into our lab was manufactured after Super Talent already began producing DDR3-1800 SDRAM, which means that all fastest memory chips are now being used for this particular memory type instead. Therefore, there is no hope that Super Talent DDR3-1600 will demonstrate some phenomenal overclocking results, which is actually proven by our experiments.