Hello again folks , today we are gonna review Gskill’s RipJawsX 1600Mhz CL9 DDR3 4GBx1 RAM. From quite some time now Gskill has proved itself as one of the best Brands when it comes to Overclocking , Performance and Price. This RAM best fits the low to mid-end systems and is one of the best choice if you are planning for a budget Gaming RIG. You can literally overclock this RAM to its limits given you know what you are doing! Now lets have a look at the RAM itself :
This RAM doesn’t have flashy heat spreader but is indeed a decent looking one.
Overclocking & Results
The Rig that we used for Benching was :
| CPU | AthlonII X2 |
| RAM | Gskill RipjawsX DDR3 4GB 1600Mhz CL9 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte 880GM-USB3L |
| PSU | Cosair CX430W |
The stock or defaults values for the RAM are as follows :
| Frequency | 1600Mhz |
| Memory Size | 4GBx1 |
| Timings | 9-9-9-24 |
| Voltage | 1.5 Volts |
Following are the different overclock Settings / Profiles used for Benchmarking:
| Component | Stock Settings | OC1 Settings | OC2 Settings |
| AMD AthlonII X2 | 3.2Ghz @ 1.4V | 4.08Ghz @ 1.52V | 4.18Ghz @ 1.52V |
| GSkill Ripjaws DDR3 | 1600Mhz CL9 | 1700Mhz CL11 @1.5v | 1920Mhz CL11 @1.6v |
| 880GM Northbridge | 2000Mhz | 2340Mhz | 2600Mhz |
Graphs for Benchmarking Results
Results in Details
| Benchmark | Stock | OC1 | OC2 | Units |
| MaxxMEM – Mem-Copy | 8230 | 9019 | 9934 | MB/s |
| MaxxMEM – Mem-Read | 8030 | 9839 | 10546 | MB/s |
| MaxxMEM – Mem-Write | 5768 | 8804 | 9080 | MB/s |
| MaxxMEM – Mem-Latency | 57.4 | 52.4 | 49.0 | ns |
| AIDA64 Mem-Read | 7950 | 9758 | 10601 | MB/s |
| AIDA64 Mem-Write | 5783 | 9183 | 9433 | MB/s |
| AIDA64 Mem-Copy | 7643 | 8709 | 9782 | ns |
| AIDA64 Mem-Latency | 51.2 | 45.4 | 43.3 | ns |
| Sandra Mem-performance | 7.3 | 9 | 9.9 | GB/s |
| Sandra Interger iSSE2 Mem-BW | 7.28 | 9 | 9.88 | GB/s |
| Sandra Float iSSE2 Mem-BW | 7.31 | 9 | 10 | GB/s |
| SuperPI 1M (mod1.5 XS) | 24.539 | 19.828 | 19.063 | Secs |
| wPrime 32M | 49.03 | 38.421 | 37.361 | Secs |
Conclusion
As seen from the results Overclocking this RAM is very easy. In my case I reached 1920-1940 Mhz @ 11-11-11-28-38 @2T on 1.6 Volts. From this its quite obvious that the RAM can go past 2000Mhz with more relaxed timings i.e at CL12 and on 1.7Volts if required. I tried loosen the timings as much as I could and set memory Voltage to 1.7Volts on Gigabyte 880GM-USB3L; but the motherboard won’t accept it and would reset the CPU clock and RAM multiplier to default. This doesn’t mean that the RAM is not capable of reaching 2000Mhz+ since I am pretty sure that the motherboard was limiting the MAX Overclock and not the RAM. On a side not : Specs for Gigabyte 880GM-USB3L says it supports “1666+ Mhz” Ram so it was pretty good getting 1920-1940Mhz stable on this motherboard.
I would recommend this RAM for low to mid-end PC builds while there are better alternatives from Gskill and Corsair for Beefy RIG Builds. The price to performance of this RAM is rock solid!
