Storage World

It’s only been a few short months since Intel’s P35 chipset arrived with DDR3, and already memory manufacturers are cranking up the heat and releasing high speed DDR3 memory kits targeted squarely at enthusiasts.

Thanks in no small part to Micron and its Z9 DDR3 chips, a number of memory manufacturers were able to quickly introduce DDR3 memory kits rated for speeds in excess of 1.33GHz. One such kit is Super Talent’s W1600UX2G7. The W1600UX2G7 is a 2GB memory kit rated for operation at 1.6GHz with a CAS latency of 7. At the time of its introduction, these specs made the W1600UX2G7 the fastest DDR3 kit available. During testing, however, Super Talent tested its own speed record by releasing a 1.87GHz kit. The modules themselves feature cast aluminum heat spreaders, but only on one side; these modules are single-sided.

The W1600UX2G7 kit was tested on an Asus Blitz Extreme motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. Because no P35 board officially supports 1.6GHz memory speeds, it was resorted to a little overclocking to hit the kit’s rated frequency. With the memory and CPU humming along at 1.6GHz and 3.2GHz (8x 400MHz FSB), respectively, SiSoft SANDRA XI reported available bandwidth of 7.9GBps. A low-quality F.E.A.R. benchmark yielded a frame rate of 344fps. I also spent some time overclocking the memory further and hit a stable 1.9GHz by setting voltage to 2.1V.

DDR3 system memory is currently much more expensive than DDR2 and only supported on a few Intel chipsets, but Super Talent’s W1600UX2G7 kit is a
clear sign that the technology is maturing nicely. By the time DDR3 system memory goes mainstream, enthusiasts will have plenty of worthwhile products to choose from. For now, though, Super Talent’s 1,600MHz DDR3 kit should definitely be on everyone’s short list.