Although G.Skill has existed since 1989, when it was founded by a group of enthusiasts, the company only really made its début in 2003 as a maker of high-end overclocking memory. Since then G.Skill has continued to gain momentum and today dominates the overclocking market.

However, although G.Skill does produce some of the industry’s best performing memory, they have not limited themselves to the enthusiast crowd. Rather, with extremely competitive pricing, virtually everyone has had the ability to use G.Skill memory. In fact, G.Skill has placed a great deal of pressure on the competition, forcing other makers of high-end memory, such as Corsair and OCZ Technology, to also become more competitive with their own pricing.

Since the release of the new Intel Lynnfield processors, G.Skill has been busy preparing new memory products to support the P55 platform. So far they have had a huge amount of success with this new Intel platform and for a while dominated the top five spots for the CPU-Z hall of fame for the highest memory frequency reached. Still, even today the top three positions are owned by G.Skill, with A-DATA now claiming 4th and 5th spot.

However, it’s not just through overclocking that G.Skill has had success with the P55 platform, as their extensive product line up has allowed them to cover much of the market. Perhaps their most impressive series yet was announced during October 2009 when they unveiled the new ECO series. This new series is designed specifically for the Intel Lynnfield processors.

That said, while most Core i5/i7 memory modules operate at 1.65v, with some working at just 1.60v, these new ECO modules require just 1.35v of power! This massive 18% drop in voltage does not mean that these G.Skill ECO modules operate at loose timings, in fact we found quite the opposite. Despite there being far fewer CAS7 memory kits available when compared to CAS8 and 9, these low-voltage memory modules operate at CAS7-8-7-24-2N.

Incredibly, despite the huge drop in voltage, these G.Skill ECO memory modules actually operate at very aggressive timings that many higher voltage modules are not capable of. However what makes these low-latency timings even more impressive is the fact that this memory is designed to operate at a frequency of 1600MHz.

You would be forgiven for thinking that such impressive memory is going to come at a serious price premium. After all, there are no other 1.35v memory modules that we know of right now capable of 1600MHz, and none can handle CAS7 timings. So with the cheapest DDR3-1600 memory kits with a 4GB capacity selling for around $95 US, we were shocked to find the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) kits on sale for just $105 US. This makes this new memory cheaper than virtually everything else worth mentioning...

Whereas DDR2 memory modules require 1.8v, the newer DDR3 memory modules are designed to work at just 1.5v, allowing them to work at greater frequencies while still saving power and generating less heat. The voltage specification was quickly exceeded, with many DDR3 memory modules receiving rating of 1.65v and higher.

Today 1.65v is considered the norm, though we expect that this trend will start to fade and the new G.Skill ECO series is the first evidence of this. With a voltage rating of 1.35v they are 18% more efficient than the majority of DDR3 memory modules.

The G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory is designed to work at CAS7-8-7-24-2N timings, which are extremely aggressive timings for DDR3 memory operating at 1600MHz regardless of voltage. As far as we are aware there are no other DDR3-1600 memory that can operate below 1.5v, while there are only a small handful of kits that can handle CAS7 timings at 1600MHz.

DDR3 memory modules feature 240-pins, the same number as DDR2, though they are in no way compatible. DDR3 modules have a different key notch location, making it impossible to install DDR2 modules in DIMM slots designed for DDR3 memory. The new Intel Lynnfield processors exclusively support DDR3 memory and therefore it will not be possible to use DDR2 memory with these processors.

The G. Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory kits are available only in 4GB capacities at either 1333MHz or 1600MHz. The modules use a 6-layer PCB design that feature eight memory chips on each side. These memory chips are cooled via typical heatspreaders that are color coded gray and feature small ventilation holes at the top. Finally G.Skill claims to be backing these memory modules with a lifetime warranty.

Hardware - Intel Core i5 750 (LGA1156) - G.Skill ECO PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) - OCZ Reaper PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) - Corsair XMS3 PC3-12800 (4GB) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - ASUS GeForce GTX 285 (1GB) - Asus P7P55D Deluxe (Intel P55) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - Intel System Driver 9.​​1.​​1.​​1019 - Nvidia Forceware 195.62

When measuring the memory bandwidth using various timings at 1600MHz one thing quickly becomes clear, timings make little difference to the performance of Core i5 processors. For example, when we tighten the timings of the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 memory to CAS6-7-6-20, the bandwidth is increased from 19.8GB/s to just 20.1GB/s, while the CAS9-9-9-24 timings of the Corsair memory provided 19.4GB/s.

When testing with EVEREST Ultimate Edition we do see a slight change in the read performance, while the write performance does remain much the same.

Finally MaxxMem² confirms that there is little difference in performance between the various memory configurations.

When testing with WinRAR the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory was found to provide 5% more performance when compared to the Corsair memory using CAS9 timings. By manually tightening up the timings we were able to squeeze even more performance out of the G.Skill memory, allowing for an 8% performance margin when compared to the Corsair memory.

The slight difference in memory bandwidth has no impact on the MaxxPI² prime calculation benchmark and as you can see, each configuration delivered very similar results.

The same thing was seen when testing CINEBENCH R10, as the memory timings appeared to have no bearing on this test.

As expected, the memory timings have little impact on gaming performance and for the most part CAS9 memory performed just as well as CAS6/7 memory. Therefore the true advantage of the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory here is its ability to operate at lower voltages.

Impressively, although the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory is designed to work at CAS7-8-7-24 timings using 1.35v, we were able to tighten these timings to 6-6-6-15 at 1333MHz using 1.50v which is impressive. More over, we were able to max the frequency out at 1800MHz using CAS8-8-8-24 timings at 1.50v, which is a very respectable result.

While this was impressive, we also noticed that the more expensive lower-latency memory provided almost no performance gains when compared to cheaper DDR3 memory using looser timings. This was both good and bad news for Core i7 owners.

The good news was users could get away with cheaper CAS9 memory without sacrificing any real performance. The bad news was those that had spent more on their DDR3 memory were not going to be rewarded for doing so.

Although we are facing the exact same situation with the Core i5 processors which also appear unfazed by memory timings, this is not necessarily bad news for this new G.Skill memory kit. Fortunately at just $105 US users are not paying a price premium for this low-voltage, low-latency memory, which we must admit surprised us.

Rather, the G.Skill ECO Series PC3-12800 CL7 (4GB) memory kit will cost roughly the same as the cheapest DDR3-1600 memory money can buy. Given that we know of no other memory that can operate at 1600MHz with such aggressive timings using just 1.35v of power, makes this new G.Skill memory exceptionally good value.

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Reviewed By Steven Walton