Demand on 4 Gigabyte DDR3 modules has gone through the roof over the last 12 months. Because of that, market is now full with offerings from various manufacturers, some of which we already made you familiar with. Today, we’re going to have a look at yet another fish in this sea of memory to tell if it’s a shark or just a baby sprat.The memory in question is an 8 Gigabyte set dropped to our lair by the company called Patriot. Even though these days Patriot is not a byword for extreme overclocking, the brand used to go wild in the past offering memory rated as high as DDR700 and DDR2-1280. The kit we’ll be dealing with today is specced at DDR3-2133 and called Viper Xtreme Division 2. The name looks like a random sequence of shouty words, but it probably makes sense for some customers and guys at the marketing office. The specification of the memory can be found on the sheet below:
| Manufacturer | Patriot Memory |
| Series | Viper Xtreme Division 2 |
| Part Number | PXD38G2133C11K |
| Type | DDR3 |
| Capacity | 8 GB (2 x 4GB) |
| Frequency | 2'133 MHz |
| Timings | 11-11-11-30 |
| VDIMM | 1.65 Volt |
| Registred/Unbuffered | Unbuffered |
| ECC | No |
| Cooling | Passive Heatspreader |
| Waranty | Lifetime warranty |
| Package Type | Boxed |
As it is very common these days and age, Patriot have stuck with an operating voltage of 1.65V, no extra creativity points will be awarded here. The spec of DDR3-2133 is not bad, but the CL rating in double figures does sound a bit depressing. Still, those are just paper figures, let’s look at the situation as it is in real life.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Results |
| Page 2 - Closer Look | Page 5 - Conclusion |
| Page 3 - Photo Gallery |
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Closer Look
Similar to other Patriot products, the Viper Xtreme stuff ships being secured via a plastic case, which, because of its transparency, could also look attractive hanging in a showcase.
The actual modules are fitted with a medium-height two-part heatspreaders colored black, silver and copper. We believe that the copper coloured bits are actual copper, as with the total height of 42mm or 37mm above the memory slot, these weigh in at 75 gramms each, which is not what you’d call lightweight.
Taking a look at the SPD, we find multiple JEDEC profiles, highest of which is DDR3-1333. In addition, we get two XMP, both of which are commonly being misread by CPU-Z. In reality, one sets up the memory for 2133 11-11-11-30-3T and the second for 1866 9-11-9-27-2T operation in case the user can’t or don’t want to set these values themselves.
Removing heatspreaders from Patriot memory has always been a challenge in the past as the used glue was very sticky so they wouldn’t come off without a fight and when they did – they’d tear one or two memory ICs off with them. This time, we brought along a sledgehammer, a powerdrill and a gas torch … just to make sure our balls are solid enough to give it another go.
Things turned out to be easy – having applied minimal heating and pullforce, the heatspreaders popped off revealing Hynix 2Gbit CFR memory chips. Those of readers with IC knowledge would instantly say that these are not the ones overclockers are looking for as they’re weaker compared to their predecessor, the Hynix 2Gbit BFR. And they’d be right. But you never know, so let’s find out.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Results |
| Page 2 - Closer Look | Page 5 - Conclusion |
| Page 3 - Photo Gallery |
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Results |
| Page 2 - Closer Look | Page 5 - Conclusion |
| Page 3 - Photo Gallery |
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Results
Performance memory is worth the extra money only when it’s used on a performance platform. These days, the name of the game is Intel Ivy Bridge, so that would be our primary testing rig.| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H (BIOS F9) |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3770K (ES, E0) |
| Graphic card | XFX 8600 GT |
| Memory | Patriot Memory Viper Xtreme Division 2 Edition PXD38G2133C11K |
| HDD | Samsung 40 GB |
| PSU | Silverstone OP1000 |
| OS | Windows 7, 64 bit SP1 |
Our experience suggests that Prime 95 and HCI Memtest is the couple of tests feared most by unstable memory. We’ll select eight 750MB instance 100% pass of the latter as our yardstick for stability, as it is relatively quick and familiar for us way of testing things.
Even though Ivy Bridge has brought a lot more flexibility to memory overclocking in comparison with Sandy Bridge, it still has a number grey areas which you can’t reach manouvering with available memory multipliers and adjusting the BCLK between 98 and 108MHz, the values we found out to be the extremes of full stability. Because of that, we use a more flexible secondary platform, which will also be used to verify the overclocking results which we thought made little sense on the Ivy Bridge.
| Motherboard | ASUS M5A99X (BIOS 0902) |
| CPU | AMD FX-8150 |
| Graphic card | XFX 8600 GT |
| Memory | Patriot Memory Viper Xtreme Division 2 Edition PXD38G2133C11K |
| HDD | Samsung 40 GB |
| PSU | Silverstone OP1000 |
| OS | Windows 7, 64 bit SP1 |
Unfortunately, due to memory controller limitations, which regular users are also very likely to encounter, both our platforms cannot support stable memory operation at frequency in excess of 1250MHz or DDR3-2500 so no testing above that will be done.
Twenty timing times five voltage settings is a lot of information to swallow at once, so we’ll analyse the results step by step.
Firstly, we see close to no scaling from voltage when using “straight” timings like 8-8-8, 9-9-9 and so on. This could be partially explained by the fact that most ICs these days have so-called “walls” using certain tRCD and tRP values which stop memory from scaling from voltage with a fixed tCAS value.
Secondly, we notice an emerged pattern that in order to maintain linear scaling from voltage at least up to 1.65V, tRCD must be equal to tCAS+2 and tRP to tCAS+1 which we highlighted in bold on the results’ table. Similar behavior is characteristic for nearly all memory chips currently available, not only Hynix 2Gbit CFR, so it explains the presence of lots of kits with “uneven” timings on the market.
Thirdly and most shockingly, we see that our sample has failed to achive rated speeds topping out at 1050MHz (DDR3-2100) using 11-11-11-30 timings regardless of voltage. Yes, we do use a tough testing procedure but so can the actual users – there is rendering software, for example, as sensitive on stability as the HCI MemTest we use. Having taken a deeper research into the issue, we found that the culprit is the 1T command rate, which both our motherboards default to. Setting it to 2T instead, as it is prescribed in the XMP, made things stable up to 1070MHz, which can be classified as a specification pass. Still, if memory is barely capable of doing rated speed, it won’t leave much headroom for the annual 2-5MHz overclockability loss caused by normal degradation, so in this aspect, Patriot are just begging for high return rates unless they tighten up the binning procedure.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Results |
| Page 2 - Closer Look | Page 5 - Conclusion |
| Page 3 - Photo Gallery |
Discuss this article in the forums [pagebreak]
Conclusion
Let’s look at the last important factor – the price. The PXD38G2133C11K kit we’re looking at currently retails starting from 56€ in the EU (per geizhals). For a little bit less than that (50€) one can get a Crucial set which boasts DDR3-1866 9-9-9 speeds our Patriots simply won’t achieve. On the plus side, however, we see that Patriot is one of the cheapest 2x4Gb kits sold as DDR3-2133, so taking into account quite decent heatspreaders, its price can actually be called somewhat competitive.All things considered, we can see why Patriot are not in the lead when it comes to producing enthusiast memory at the moment. While product quality is clearly above average, there still are some minor issues with the binning which might serve as a barrier for potential buyers.
We will try to be fair when handing out a rating. Starting with perfect five, we deduct one star for the failure to achieve rated speeds using common manual settings, so the end result is four stars out of five.
Rating
The Patriot Memory Viper Xtreme Division 2 Edition PXD38G2133C11K kit receives four out of five stars.
| Page 1 - Introduction | Page 4 - Results |
| Page 2 - Closer Look | Page 5 - Conclusion |
| Page 3 - Photo Gallery |
Discuss this article in the forums