Cell Shock, Corsair, and Kingston Introduce Ultra Speed DDR3

Overclocking

We were more than surprised when Super Talent DDR3-1600 topped our overclock charts at DDR3-2008 in late July. A few days later OCZ DDR3-1800 set a new stable overclock record at DDR3-2040. The three new memories based on the same Micron Z9 memory chips matched or slightly exceeded the fastest overclock we have found in testing at AnandTech.


The Kingston DDR3-1800C8 and the Corsair DDR3-1800C7 both top out at DDR3-2040, matching the OCZ DDR3-1800 as the fastest memory tested. Cell Shock 1800 manages one higher FSB with complete stability, with an overclock speed of DDR3-2044. These are all incredible overclocks, with all five memories based on Micron Z9 memory chips exceeding 2000 MHz at the top.

Advances in memory technology are rarely as dramatic as the speed and timing improvements we are seeing with Micron Z9 memory chips. For reference we included our ongoing overclocking chart results for DDR2 just so you can see how significant the new Micron Z9 memory really is. The highest DDR2 we have ever tested reaches DDR2-1315 in an EVGA 680i motherboard. The same memory tops out just above 1100 in our standard DDR2 test bed.

Early DDR3-1066 reached a bit higher than DDR2 such as the typical 1370 achieved with the launch of Corsair DDR3-1066. Timings, however, were somewhat slow. Then the Kingston HyperX pushed 7-7-7 timings all the way to DDR3-1500. Now, just a few months later state-of-the-art DDR3 is reaching DDR3-2000+ at aggressive timings. This kind of progress in memory technology makes the original JEDEC target of 800 to 1600 MHz for DDR3 speeds now appear far too limited.

Even more significant, every new memory tested in this roundup reaches at least DDR3-1950 at fast 7-7-7 timings. The Corsair DDR3-1800 C7 performs best in this test, reaching a stable DDR3-1972 at 7-7-7-18 at 2.15V. This speed far exceeds the specified DDR3-1800 at 7-7-7-21 timings.

Super Pi

In Kingston Launches Low-Latency DDR3 memory performance was compared at 800, 1066, 1333, and highest memory speed. With the introduction of higher speed DDR3 we have added 1600 and 2000 to the standard comparison speeds, if the DDR3 memory is capable of reaching that speed.

To look at pure number crunching, Super Pi 1.5 was run in all memory test configurations. Super Pi is a very simple program as it merely calculates the value of Pi to a designated number of decimal positions. In this case we chose 2 Million places.

Click chart to enlarge

Super Pi is fastest (lower value for calc time) on the Kingston DDR3-1800C8, while at 1600 and 2000 the Cell Shock DDR3-1800 is the best performer. Corsair is best at 1333 and OCZ is tops at 800 and 1066. The differences among the five Micron-based memories are extremely small with no clear winner. All the boards are exceptional in their performance.

It is interesting that by 1333 the lower latency DDR3 has completely closed any gap that exists with the fastest timing DDR2, which can run as fast as 3-3-3 timings. Lower latency DDR3 clearly demonstrates you will not have to give up a thing with DDR3 in the overlap speeds and you will gain even more performance at higher speeds as well. The only current roadblock to DDR3 is the high price of admission.