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Appeared on: Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Supertalent PC3-1600 CL7

1. Introduction

Headquartered in San Jose, California, Super Talent designs and manufactures DDR and DDR2 memory modules and Flash based storage devices for computers and consumer electronics. Counting 20 years of Memory Industry experience, Super Talent relies on technical research and its commitment to product development to deliver leading edge memory products to the market.

Super Talent Overclocking memory is engineered for speed. Extreme Performance DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 DIMMs support high frequencies and low latencies for optimum performance. These products are 100% tested at their rated specs on popular enthusiast motherboards to ensure performance and reliability. Custom cast aluminum High Efficiency heat spreaders are included for optimum thermal performance.

Why Super Talent Overclocking Memory?

- Super Talent Announces World's Fastest 2GB DDR3 Kits

The W1600UX2G7 is an extreme performance 2GB kit of low latency DDR3-1600 DIMMs that supports 1600MHz+ clock speeds. It is ideal for gamers, power users and overclockers, and is perfectly suited for motherboards based on the new Intel P35 chipset. This kit has been tested and is guaranteed to operate at 1600MHz at very aggressive 7-7-7-18 latencies at 1.8 volts. It has been tested as a matched pair of modules in a dual channel motherboard to ensure ultimate reliability, compatibility and performance.

These modules are clad in custom black cast aluminum high-efficiency (HE) heatspreaders for optimum thermal performance. Efficient cooling is essential to optimize speed and to preserve the life of the DIMMs. This kit is also available as individual 1GB modules (P/N W1600UA1G7).

- Main features

2. Retail package

SuperTalent provided us with the retail package of the W1600UX2G7 (2x1GB). The retail price is around $450. The retail kit is what we are used to when buying dual channel memory kits, just the two modules packaged in a protective plastic shell.

Removing the memory modules and taking a closer look, we have on the black cast aluminum heat spreaders, the "SuperTalent" logo, while on the reverse side is a sticker with the part number, capacity, and timing details.

The SuperTalent W1600UX2G7 has been designed to work at DDR3-1600 with CL7, making it one of the fastest ever DDR3 memory products:

After installing the memory in our system, we used CPU-Z to see full details. The embedded SPD info on the Micro DDR3 chipset, only has settings for 457MHz and 533MHz and at "only" 1.5V:

3. Testing DDR3 memory

In order to test the SuperTalent DDR3-1600CL7 modules, we used the following setup:

While for benchmarking, we used:

Testing DDR3 memory was a new experience for us, so we had to change our testing methodology a bit. We overclocked the Intel E6600 up to 3.60GHz in order to eliminate the CPU factor as much as possible:

Memory Frequency
Real Frequency
Voltage
FSB:RAM
CPU x
FSB
CPU Speed
DDR3 1333 CL6-6-6-16
666.50
1.80
3:5
9
400
3600
DDR3 1600 CL7-7-7-17
575.00
1.90
1:2
9
400
3600
DDR3 1800 CL8-8-8-21
625.00
2.00
1:2
8
450
3600
DDR3 1853 CL8-8-8-21
926.50
Auto
1:2
7
463
3241

Keeping the FSB at 400MHz and CPU multiplier at 9x, we could directly compare DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600. We then dropped the CPU multiplier to 8x and raised the FSB up to 450MHz in order to maintain 3.6GHz CPU speed. Finally, to find the maximum memory speed, we dropped the CPU multiplier to 7x and raised the FSB.

In all cases, the memory modules had to pass all synthetic memory tests without producing any problems. Note, that results vary from memory module to memory module, and at these very high overclocking speeds, you need very good cooling both for the Northbridge and processor.

Below is the information at each selected memory timing, with CL6, CL7 and CL8:

4. Sisoft Sandra - RightMark

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what's really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level.

You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCIe, ODBC Connections, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Sisoft Sandra offers two tests, un-buffered and buffered. Below are the test results.

As was expected, the higher the memory frequency, the better the memory bandwidth.

 

Before this test packet was created there was no proper software for measuring vital system parameters such as CPU/Chipset/RAM providing steady and reliable (reproducible) test results and allowing for changing test parameters in a wide range.

Vital low-level system characteristics include latency and real RAM bandwidth, average/minimal latency of different cache levels and its associativity, real L1-L2 cache bandwidth and TLB levels specs. Besides, these aspects are usually not paid sufficient attention in product technical documentation (CPU or chipset). Such test suite, which combines a good deal of subsets aimed at measuring objective system characteristics, is a must have for estimating crucial objective platform parameters.

RightMark offers a variety of test results, including both read and write performance from synthetic and performance tests:

RightMark scores were slightly different than those from Sisoft Sandra. The best performance in all tests was at the DDR3-1600 setting.

5. Science Mark 2.0 - Super Pi

Science Mark 2.0 is an attempt to put the truth behind benchmarking. In an attempt to model real world demands and performance, SM2 is a suite of high-performance benchmarks that realistically stress system performance without architectural bias. Science Mark 2.0 is comprised of 7 benchmarks, each of which measures a different aspect of real world system performance.

ScienceMark2 is a benchmark utility that is heavily affected by memory performance and CPU speed. The results above show that the higher the memory frequency, the better the performance

 

SuperPI has become an utility to benchmark modern systems. In August 1995, the calculation of pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits was succeeded by using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo. The program was written by D.Takahashi and he collaborated with Dr. Y.Kanada at the computer center, the University of Tokyo.

A Total SuperPI result from Intel XE6800

This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environments such as Windows NT and Windows 95 and called Super PI. The software offers up to 32M calculations of PI numbers. At all memory settings, we tested only up to 2M calculations.

As with RightMark, the fastest SuperPI 2M calculation occurs at the DDR3-1600CL7 memory speed.

6. Everest Ultimate Edition 2006 - PC MARK05

- Everest Ultimate Edition 2006

Click for official website!EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings.

CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information make EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC. The software has several tests built-in for memory and CPU/FPU.

Everest Ultimate Edition 2007 showed its raw memory performance as we reached 10.408 MB/sec for memory read, very impressive results.

 

Click for homepage!PCMark®05 is everything you need to reliably and easily measure the performance of your PC and determine its strengths and weaknesses. With PCMark05, you will be able to select the optimal upgrades for your existing PC, or choose the right new PC that fits your specific needs. This easy-to-use product gives you the same tools and knowledge that virtually every professional tester in the industry uses.

The best PC Mark 05 memory Index score comes at the DDR3-1800 memory setting.

7. DDR3 vs. DDR2 - Page 1

We wanted to see how this DDR3 memory compares against DDR2 memory at the same timings with more-or-less, the same test environment We had already tested in our labs DDR2 memory modules that can go as high as 1250MHz with CL5-5-5-15-2T memory timings, from OCZ and Crucial:

To be exact, only the OCZ PC2-9200 modules reached 1250MHz, while the Crucial PC2-8500 managed 10MHz less at 1240MHz. The only difference with the DDR3 memory testbed was the different motherboard (eVGA 680i LT). So we should be able to get some level of comparison, even though Nvidia's 680i is faster in the memory benchmarks than Intel's P35. Both DDR2 and DDR3 memories were tested with the same memory timings, despite the fact that DDR3 memory could also work at 1T mode:

Comparison with DDR2
Memory Frequency
Real Frequency
Voltage
FSB:RAM
CPU x
FSB
CPU Speed
DDR3 1067
CL5-5-5-15 (1T)
533,50
1.80
1:2
9
267
2403
DDR3 1150
CL5-5-5-15 (1T)
575,00
2.00
1:2
9
288
2592
DDR3 1250
CL5-5-5-15 (1T)
625,00
2.10
1:2
9
313
2817

Both the DDR2 and DDR3 modules were tested at exactly the same CPU speeds and FSB. It's very interesting that the SuperTalent DDR3-1600CL7 can work at CL5-1T even at 1250MHz, with of course the corresponding memory voltage.

In these tests, we used the following BIOS settings for Asus the P5K3 Deluxe:

Memset can offer more information about the memory timings the Asus P5K3 Deluxe has chosen for this test:

Let's now proceed on to the test results...

8. DDR3 vs. DDR2 - Page 2

Sisoft Sandra offers a memory benchmark test for absolute memory bandwidth performance in MB/sec. In all cases, DDR2 memory come in first, with either the Crucial or OCZ modules.

SuperPI results are affected by the memory timings. It seems the 1T mode of SuperTalent DDR3-1600CL7 offers a performance improvement from 1067 up to 1250MHz.

Lastly, ScienceMark 2.0 confirms the Sisoft Sandra results with DDR2 dominating in all test results.

9. Conclusion

SuperTalent Technology has in the last year become a very good performer, either with DRAM memory or USB sticks. The SuperTalent DDR3-1600CL7 product fills the need for extra fast, DDR3 memory with low latency. The rating speeds of 1600MHz with CL7 really does sound very good.

Passing to the tests, we were simply... blown away with these memory modules. We can call them a "universal" workhorse, since no matter what you want to do, these modules will please you. Starting from 1067MHz, you can go down to CL5 with 1T memory setting at 1.80V! If you raise the memory voltage up to 2.10V, you can keep CL5-5-5-15-1T close to 1300MHz, very impressive

Entering 1333MHz, you have to use CL6-6-6-6-16-2T, while at 1600MHz, it does come with the promised CL7 timings. But you won't stop there... 1800MHz comes very easily with CL8, and we found the maximum memory speed to be around 1853MHz (effective 926Mhz) or not...? .

Our system was totally stable at 1853MHz. But under DOS/BIOS we could even rise up to 1960MHz. However, Windows couldn't start, no matter how many settings we tried under the BIOS. This could mean two things. Either the problem was dependent on the CPU or simply, our cooling was reaching its limits. There are reports of people being able to reach 2.0GHz, and from our findings, we can be sure that this magic number is possible. Nevertheless, this memory product does work as advertised, and more...

Ending our presentation of the SuperTalent PC3-1600CL7 (2x1GB kit), we are very pleased with its performance. The retail price is high at ~$450, but not many memory manufacturers can deliver what SuperTalent offers right now. There are huge overclocking possibilities and enthusiast users will find in this product, a memory module that keeps its promise and delivers fast performance. Overall, a highly recommended product.



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