G.Skill PC12800Our next arrival is Taiwan-based
G.Skill, a company which has a long history already with this site, and this is how they see themselves :
"G. SKILL", established in 1989 by enthusiasts, is a leading memory Module Manufacturer based in Taipei, Taiwan. With traditional strengths, we have built excellent reputation by meeting market demand and fostering business competitiveness both locally and internationally with our dedications to: competitive prices, on-time delivery, assured quality and customer-oriented Services.
Our mission statement is to provide superior memory products and satisfactory services in order to keep pace with our customers' growing needs, and help our customers in adding value to their products. And we pledge we will continue to do so and enable both sides to obtain significant competitive advantages in the market segments. Investing in human resource is just one of the reasons why G. SKILL is able to provide such high level of efficient and cost effective services.
G. SKILL is managed as a family, provides a dynamic, challenging and harmonious working environment for all employees. With the open-minded management, each individual's potential talent can be fully developed.
With this clear goal of providing satisfactory services for customers, our R&D department is constantly developing the fastest and best performing products; our marketing and sales departments ensure all the information needed is available and presented in an clear and understandable format.
Here's the package that G.Skill provided :
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(click for larger version)Unlike most of the other manufacturers, G.Skill decided not to include a cardboard box around the package, which is a departure from their earlier packaging for the DDR2 counterpart for example. Although a cardboard box brings obvious advantages for fancy box design, coloring etc., a blister still provides the best look at the modules themselves. At the back of the blister G.Skill did include a card, pictured in the thumbnail below.
Packaging: inside cardUnpacked, here's an unobstructed look at one of the modules :
The appearence is completely similar to its DDR2 counterpart, reviewed
here. G.Skill goes for a blue heatspreader design, with its name and engraved in silver lettering. No fancy cooling design for the heatspreaders - low-voltage DDR3 doesn't need this anyway - but the modules do have a nice look and feel. If you need something more fancy, G.Skill has alternatives in its PI or Perfect Storm lineup.
More module imagesTime to have a look at their
specifications :
1600MHz DDR3 (PC12800)
Latencies : 8-8-8-21-2T (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS-CR)
Operating voltage : 1.65 Volts
240pin DIMM
Intel XMP profile
Parity : Unbuffered
Memory size : 3x 2048Mb
These are the specifications one has come to expect from a midrange triple channel kit, with the slight advantage that G.Skill already guarantees these timings at 1.6V through the XMP profile.
One little remark to the side maybe, completely outside of specifications or performance : I'd like to call out to G.Skill to change the name of this kit, and every kit not belonging to the Trident, PI or Perfect Storm series. It's the only kit featured here that does not have a name tag, it goes by the impossible to remember "F3-12800CL8T-6GBHK" tag. Say what ? Please change it into something catchy guys ;-)
Overclocking
Let's see how these overclock now, shall we. Before we get to the results, we have to mention that these modules also displayed the same behaviour as the Patriots when overclocking : the 2:12 setting did not overclock very well, whereas the 2:10 setting got us quite far. The reason for this escapes me honestly, but is probably motherboard specific.
To start at cas 7, the modules certainly did not disappoint, reaching 770Mhz fully stable. The cas 8 setting however was very impressive indeed : we reached 895Mhz (1790Mhz DDR) prime stable on these with only 1.65V, which is a 12% overclock on quite tight timings (and again : command rate 1T). After this great result cas 9 disappointed a little with "only" a 5Mhz increase over the cas 8 setting. Still, 900Mhz is quite nice for a midrange kit...
Maximum Overclock cas 7, 8 and 9
Next : Mushkin ->
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, thats cheap!
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I was just about to buy a kit of OCZ Platinum, nice to see the overclocking results here, thank you. Should probably mention the 6GB OCZ Platinum 1600MHz kit is available for $80 shipped AMIR, cheapest 1600MHz kit of all those tested.