ocaholic - Memory > DDR3 > G.Skill Trident-X 2x4GB DDR3-2666 CL11 1.65V Review

[pagebreak]

Closer Look

The 2666C11 model of Trident-X comes shipped in a cardboard box, accomodated with a brief manual and an additional fan assembly.

Heatspeaders of Trident-X are finished in a blend of red and black, which is likely to fit with most of motherboard models out there. In cases when it doesn’t, we would like to remind that the top red parts are removable and repaintable, supposedly without even losing the warranty. Removing the tops can also be helpful to fit the memory under certain large CPU aircoolers.

Unlike thin aluminium plates commonly used these days, heatsinks of the Trident-X are much heavier and feel more solid. Of course, what makes heatsinks effective is the amount of surface area they provide but this is not the case with Trident-X. Having a proper mass of to play around with, it is surprising to see G.Skill not to put it to any good use.

Taking the heatspeaders off Trident-X series is not something we would recommend doing at home due to strong adhesive that requires very careful approach. Even if you manage to succeed, you will be in for a surprise as G.Skill have taken measures to prevent users and their competitors from having access to original labelling.
As our modules are dual-sided and the middle part of serial numbers reads -2400-, some online knowledge suggests that maker of the chips is Hynix. Looking at their dimensions, we conclude that the exact model is H5TQ2G83CFR or, as commonly used online, Hynix CFR.

SPD module of the 2666C11 features some basic information on the maker and the model of the memory. Designed to make things work out of the box, SPD also contains six profiles for JEDEC specifications up to DDR3-1600 coupled up with a pair of XMP profiles with speed and timings as prescribed on the sticker, in both 1T and 2T variations.

Page 2 - Closer Look

[pagebreak]

Photo Gallery

Page 3 - Photo Gallery

[pagebreak]

Testing Method & Test Setup

To test the overclocking capabilities of the memory we are going to use Intel’s recently released Haswell platform. As memory overclocks are known to vary between different motherboards, we are going to perform the tests using two different platforms to be sure that our numbers are reliable.

Motherboard	ASUS Maximus VI Gene (BIOS 0607) Gigabyte Z87X-OC (BIOS F5q)
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770K ES @ 4.0 GHz
Graphic card	ASUS GTX 580
Memory	GSkill Trident-X F3-2666C11D-8GTXD
SSD	Samsung PM840 Pro
PSU	Seasonic Platinum 660 Watts
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Even though Haswell is very flexible on the memory frequency one can set, very few people actually do base clock (BCLK) overclocking on their daily setups. Therefore, instead of our previous procedure of fixing the voltage and raising the frequency in 10MHz steps we are now going to fix the frequency and minimize the voltage in 0.01V steps.
As usual, our stability method of choice is HCI Memtest. Since we are dealing with a 8 GB kit, we use eight 750 MB instances and call things stable if we see all of them to go past 100% without showing a single error.
Not to get things too complicated, we only set the primary timings, command rate (1T) and the memory voltage by hand while the rest of the settings is left for the motherboard and SPD to agree on.

Results

Traditionally, our aim is to see how memory reacts to voltage changes and in case with Hynix CFR this reaction translates in almost linear ability to run higher frequencies without having to raise the CAS latency. What comes to second and third entries in the primary timings list, tRCD and tRP, the main factor for lowest stable values of those is frequency, with voltage playing a role only in borderline areas. Lastly, the tRAS value we use in each part of the testing is a sensible value induced by an educated guess.
We did not test our memory much above 1.80V as we are not sure whether such voltages are suitable for daily use. Keeping things below 1.80, we were able to achieve stability at DDR3-2400 with 9-11-10-27, DDR3-2666 with 10-13-12-32 and DDR3-2933 with 11-14-13-35 none of which is a bad result. As can be seen, raising the CAS latency above 11 does not provide much of an improvement; the only thing CL12 theoretically gained is fitting this pair of modules inside a 2800C12 specification.
Looking at state of things in general, Hynix CFR seems to be a very decent option not only for Ivy Bridge, but also for Haswell-based setups since its “best at” range of DDR3-2400 to DDR3-2800 perfectly matches the “best at” range of memory controllers when it comes to daily stable memory clocks.

Page 4 - Results

[pagebreak]

Conclusion

Looking up the price for 8GB kits of F3-2666C11D-8GTXD, we see offers currently starting at 123 Euros excluding shipping across the EU. The only offers that could potentially beat the Trident-X are a cheaper DDR3-2600 set from Adata and a much cheaper DDR3-2666 set from Team Group. While this pair of kits might be able to show better ratios of stable timings, voltage and frequency, Hynix MFR chips that they are likely to use are not going to bring any performance benefits due to single-sided configuration of the modules.
In the end, we can say that Ivy Bridge-born memory models are still a force in the Haswell era, as clearly demonstrated above by the DDR3-2666 CL11 version of the Trident-X. Not only are Hynix CFR memory chips, which this kit is still based on, able to show good overclocking numbers, but those are also likely to outlast (in terms of production runs) and outperform any of the alternatives currently available. And they achieve all that while being reasonably priced, which deservedly gets our thumbs up.

Award

The 2x4GB version of G.Skill Trident-X DDR3-2666 gets an ocaholic rating of 4.5 stars out of five.