Conclusion:

Despite some initial bumps in the road, I was able to eventually reach the performance levels promised by G.Skill. Performance was excellent and I was very impressed with the ability of this ram to run at 275 MHz at 1:1 CAS 2.5 3:3:7 at only 2.65v with complete stability. Actually, adding more voltage of 2.7v detracted from the ability of this set of ram to achieve 275 MHz. I was able to benchmark at 280 MHz and run what I would consider to be 95% stable. However, I would experience a few errors detected in Memtest86+ if I ran the tests for 1-2 hours, rebooted and began to run the tests again. I could run Memtest86+ for extended periods, but after rebooting and rerunning the tests, some errors would be intermittently detected. I could run all my benchmarks, but decided not to include this data due to the possible instability.

This could be a quirk with Memtest86+, but without a hardware analyzer I could not be certain. These error problems would not have been detected, as again the memory appeared stable in Memtest86+. Nonetheless, after my daughter came into my lab and began to hit buttons on my case, she hit the reset button which the results are described above, and were repeatable after several attempts. I did not experience this problem at 275, and did not test between 275 and 280 to determine the absolute max stable speeds this ram could perform without this peculiarity occurring.

So in the end when the dust settled I was left with a positive feeling for this memory, but a mixed feeling on how the memory will be received by the enthusiast community. While people will certainly welcome highly rated memory, I feel that many will not fully understand the ability to achieve 275 MHz speeds may not be as simple as installing this memory and powering on their systems. There will invariably be people who purchase this memory and experience results similar to what I had with my 3200+. I would caution against extreme reactions, and that consideration needs to be given to the complete computer system prior to ranting to the entire world about how you feel violated.

Does this mean the G.Skill memory is problematic or not worth your hard earned money? No! I do not believe this to be the case at all. On the contrary, I feel this is high quality memory and CAN run at its lofty rating, given complimentary parts that allow similar high speeds. Furthermore, pricing is competitive with other brands with TCCD based offerings, and G.Skill is going one step further by validating the ram at high speed operation at very acceptable timings of CAS 2.5 3:3:7. In the end, the results and benchmarks speak volumes for the potential performance to be had with high HTT and memory speeds on a Socket 939 Athlon64 setup. I have no hesitation in recommending this memory to those users seeking the utmost in performance potential from their high end computing hardware. I look forward to future products from G.Skill and I will continue to follow other people’s experiences with their products.


I would like to thank Kevin Wu and G.Skill for providing these memory modules for review purposes.

Questions/Comments: Forum thread