SPD and Overclocking Results

Now we have had a good look at the kit itself let's go now to the configuration. Looking at the SPD table below you know you have some tweaking on your hands, but at the same time you know it won't be hard to set up that 2000MHz speed.

1066MHz is there, 1333MHz is kind of there but where is 1600MHz?? and why do we have 1218MHz?? These were a few things that went through my mind while I was looking at the SPD table for the first time. We live in a world full of convenience and at many points we come to expect certain things to be set up or ready to go as they are. Don't get me wrong though, I love to tweak and play with settings, but there are certain types of people that want everything on a plate and for them this SPD may be considered somewhat incomplete. At least the rated speed and timings are selectable via the XMP profile.

Disregarding the SPD table our first stop is at DDR3 1333MHz (1340MHz to be precise) with CL7-7-7-20 timings and 1T Command Rate @ 1.5v. At this speed the CPU is running at 2.81GHz (134x21). This is fairly decent but nothing to boast to your friends about so let's push it more.

Next stop is DDR3 1600MHz with CL8-8-8-24 timings and a 1T command rate @ 1.5v, the CPU is running at 2.72GHz (160x17) a step up on the multiplier would have put the CPU speed at 2.88GHz and may have given an overinflated reading during the benchmarks. Still, 1600MHz at these timings isn't all bad but 1600MHz is becoming old hat so we shall keep on tweaking and see what we can get.

Here we are at rated speed, 2000MHz is not difficult with this kit as all you have to do is select the embedded XMP. There is a downside to this though, and that is having your other OC settings messed up. If you have the option to save your OC profile then do so before you select the XMP and then note down the settings after selecting the XMP, you can then revert to your saved profile and manually input the settings. This way you won't lose any CPU OC you might have in place etc. To confirm the above graphic, here we have DDR3 2000MHz CL9-10-9-28 1T @ 1.55v, at this setting the CPU is running at 2.8GHz (200x14).

Now we push beyond those rated settings and into somewhat unknown territory, as you can see above I have the Ripjaws 2000MHz kit running at 2118MHz. This overclock was BCLK limited by my Core i5 760's IMC as it only allows a max 2:10 RAM multiplier. I managed to boot at 213 BCLK but it was too unstable to bench with, I then rewound to the above settings and was stable for all of our benchmark tests.

In the end I had to make do with a BCLK of 212 (DDR3 2118MHz) for the overclocked settings. At this speed my CPU is running at 2.75GHz (212x13). Increasing CPU multiplier by one would mean the test results may be over inflated as the CPU would be running at 2.96GHz. We investigate the effect this has in our final two application benchmarks.

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