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Although nearly a year ago now I came to the conclusion that those looking to build a Core i7 system should consider low-latency DDR3-1066 memory, or at most 1333MHz memory, this opinion was largely influenced by DDR3 pricing at the time. The memory bandwidth available to the Core i7 processor will naturally increase with the memory frequency. The problem is, while we do see quite a large increase in available memory bandwidth when going from triple-channel DDR3-1333 to DDR3-1600 memory for example, this bandwidth does not necessarily make for better performance. Games for example, will see just a frame or two extra when jumping from DDR3-1333 to DDR3-1600. However applications such as WinRAR do see decent performance gains, so really it depends on what your requirements are. Based on our findings over the past year or so, it does seem as though DDR3-1600 memory is ideal for the Core i7 processors, and it will unleash their full potential. That said, DDR3 memory clocked at 1066/1333MHz is not a great deal slower and will deliver practically the same experience. Today there is as little as $20 US difference between DDR3 clocked at 1066MHz and 1600MHz, so picking between the two is becoming less of an issue. For roughly $100 US it is possible to purchase DDR3-1333 memory that can work with CAS7-7-7-18 timings, or DDR3-1600 memory that works at CAS9-9-9-24. So really, they are very much the same these days. However if you spend a little more, around $140 - $160 US, it is possible to pick up a DDR3-1600 kit with a 6GB capacity that is capable of working at relatively low timings. This is a problem for the X Series DDR3-1600X 6GB memory, as A-DATA tell us the MSRP is $230 US, making it considerably more expensive than the majority of CAS7 DDR3-1600 kits out there. Unfortunately we are unable to verify the MSRP claimed by A-DATA, as it appears that there are no online retailers carrying this memory. In fact, availability of almost all A-DATA DDR3 memory appears very poor at the moment. While availability may be poor, the overclocking performance isn’t. When fine tuning these memory modules we were able to reach a maximum stable frequency of 1872MHz, which is a healthy 17% overclock. Furthermore, when operating at 1333MHz we were able to tighten the timings up to CAS6-6-6-16, which was quite remarkable and showed the A-DATA X Series DDR3-1600X 6GB memory to be highly flexible. Reviewed By Steven Walton |
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