Intel X99 Benchers Memory Battle

Memory by leeghoofd @ 2017-05-01

Since the launch of the Intel Sky Lake platform, we were being flooded with a multitude of different DDR4 memory ICs. After you finally decided to buy that particular tweakable kit, there were again screenshots popping up of something new and at first glance even better performing memory.  At launch date Hynix was king of the hill for the X99 quad channel setups. however the latest memory architecture release for Sky and Kaby Lake are the Samsung B-DIE ICs. When tweaked, they are able to run at high speeds in combination with ultra tight timings. These are a real treat to gain them extra precious points to climb in the HWBOT ranking. Besides the fact that the latter are 8GB modules and thus a bit more pricey than the other 4GB variants, one drawback is that these B-DIE based memories are still pretty inconsistent in quality. Wading through different OC forums we noted DOA's, degraded sticks and even many sticks just failing to do tight timings at what we consider to be standard OC speeds, hence why memory binners jumped on the wagon and are selling, logically for a little extra margin, sticks that can truly deliver the goods. Today we explore what memory is great and which one is the best for your high end Intel LGA 2011-3 platform.

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Hynix MFR OCed

Several pre-tests were conducted to verify if we had properly dialed in the right primary and secondary timings. Secondly these also needed to be stable to run the bench suite multiple times without crashing.

 

First up is the what we Overclockers consider as the mainstream memory kit, Hynix MFR for Intel's high end X99 platform. We took one of the popular kits of the lab, the G.Skill Ripjaws 4 3000C15Q-16GRR, stock rated at 15-15-15-35 2T 1.35VDimm.

For the G.Skill Ripjaws 4 3000C15 MFR Quad Channel we reached at 1.75Vdimm 3000/3200C12-13-15-18 1T Command Rate. Running 3333MHz was a no go anyway on our MFR kit, no matter the timings nor how high we set the Vdimm it was never stable enough to conduct testing.


 

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