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  • UltraWide - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    On this page:
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/7575/corsair-vengean...

    What are the exact voltages each timing/subtiming? You only list the subtimings and peak MHz, but no voltages.
  • JoannWDean - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    my buddy's aunt earned 14958 dollar past week. she been working on the laptop and got a 510900 dollar home. All she did was get blessed and put into action the information leaked on this site... http://cpl.pw/OKeIJo
  • teiva - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    My pet cat's been earning $14823 a month just by eating Whiskas biscuits dipped in cream from albino goats that only sleep in a northerly direction lol
  • jeffrey - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    Ian Cutress,
    Hello! This is another article stating 1866/C9 being the minimum for Haswell and to avoid 1600 or less. Even going so far as to say, "Any kit 1600 MHz or less is usually bad news."

    However, this ignores 1600/C8 modules. The 1600/C8 score a 200 on your Performance Index at stock timings. This is at your recommended 200 level. There are several kits of 2x4 GB 1600/C8 on Newegg that have memory profiles of 8-8-8-24 at 1.5v. I'll repeat, these 1600 8-8-8-24 1.5v kits score 200 on the Performance Index and hit the current memory sweet spot for most people of 2x4 GB. This scores within around 3% of the 1866/C9 kits which have a Performance score of 207.

    The reason I bring this up is that the 1600 8-8-8-24 kits are often less expensive than the 1866/C9 kits and offer essentially all of the performance.

    I enjoy reading your articles and appreciate how active you have been lately!
  • jeffrey - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    Here is an example of a great value for a 2x4 GB kit. This item has 500+ positive reviews and normally sells out when it goes on sale (as it is now).

    1600 MHz 8-8-8-24 1.5V
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
  • fractal9 - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    Where in the article does it state this? These days I want the most compatibility and reliability, and that means being in the JEDEC standard and at 1.5v. I don't care about a few extra fps or synthetic performance figures, I'll save my $80 and enjoy increased stability.
  • Senti - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    "we are not going to set any records" with tRFC at 10? lol, sure we would! Do you actually understand the timings you are writing about? Real tRFC is the line above where the numbers are near 300. Now we have huge table of timings that is totally useless because we can't trust it at all...

    Btw, your spam filter is awful – looks like it blocked my (dynamic) IP for unknown reason.
  • Hairs_ - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    Oh dear god. Not this again. It is time for a thorough debunking, based on the data presented, because clearly it is not going to stop.

    Established from Anandtech's own testing data:
    There is no distinguishable, patternable difference between 8GB and 16GB memory kits. In some cases, there is a swing one way or the other, but nothing is consistent.
    I think that most enthusiasts would recommend, if asked by a friend on a midrange budget, a 1600 8gb kit. The lowest price for that at C9 timings on newegg is $55. Not the $150 - 250 being bandied about for these moronic kits.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    An 1866 C9 16GB kit comes in at ~$115. (It is safe to assume that *some* kit will always be on offer.)
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    So let's look at the conclusive data:

    From all the graphs, we can conclude the difference between the Best "stupid" kit and a reasonable 1600 c9 kit is:

    Average 2.78%
    Max 13.27%
    Min 0.00%

    The best results for the stupid kits are:
    13.27% running Explicit Finite Solver (3d only, the 2d result was 3.3%) on an IGP. Anyone running this is not using an IGP to do it, I suspect.
    12.91% on USB3 copy. The page for those results states they are pulled from the Motherboard reviews, so there's no indication this speed isn't motherboard specific rather than memory specific (as some AsRock boards have USB boost which allegedly seems to work). One result on this same test had a 34.55% lead, but it had the same lead (or larger) on "faster" kits than the 1600 kit, so I am treating this as an outlier.

    The vast majority of the results are just not in the stupid kit's favour.

    Test Difference Best Stupid Kit 1600 C9 Kit Testing
    Graph 1 5.67% 12.86 12.17 IGP
    Graph 2 1.66% 9.2 9.05 IGP
    Graph 3 4.65% 9 8.6 IGP
    Graph 4 1.29% 105.39 104.05 Direct
    Graph 5 1.47% 62.94 62.03 Direct
    Graph 6 1.28% 47.4 46.8 Direct
    Graph 7 0.41% 49.55 49.35 Direct
    Graph 8 3.14% 212.5 206.03 Weird triple unbalanced which won't ever occur
    Graph 9 3.13% 123.93 120.17 Weird triple unbalanced which won't ever occur
    Graph 10 1.04% 91 90.06 Weird triple unbalanced which won't ever occur
    Graph 11 5.86% 113.85 107.55 Weird triple unbalanced which won't ever occur
    Graph 12 1.00% 54.834 55.383 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 13 12.91% 47.33 53.44 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used or if MOBO had USB speed boost.
    Graph 14 0.00% 47 47 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 15 1.56% 64 65 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 16 3.71% 190.32 183.51 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 17 1.23% 49.57 48.97 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 18 2.13% 4.8 4.7 CPU - From MOBO reviews so no indication if same testbed was used
    Graph 19 0.10% 132.06 131.93 CPU Compute
    Graph 20 1.59% 755.04 743.25 CPU Compute
    Graph 21 0.01% 38.793 38.791 CPU Compute
    Graph 22 0.45% 1354 1348 CPU Compute
    Graph 23 1.32% 613 605 CPU Compute
    Graph 24 1.33% 152 150 CPU Compute
    Graph 25 3.31% 1780 1723 IGP Compute
    Graph 26 13.27% 222 196 IGP Compute - Explicit Finite Difference Solver (3d), not something going to run on an IGP…
    Graph 27 2.49% 150.653 146.993 IGP Compute
    Graph 28 1.93% 50.731 49.769 IGP Compute
    Graph 29 2.60% 7103 6923 IGP Compute
  • Hairs_ - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    The "Weird triple unbalanced" above refers to the idea that there is some lunatic out there running a 4 generation old Dual GPU card in crossfire with a different, single GPU from the same generation but a different spec. This is referred to as "esoteric" but I think it's safe to assume that the only person doing this is someone who has video cards sitting in a pile next to a testbed because they're a video card reviewer.

    Suffice to say I don't think this test is representative of any real world use pattern, but then neither are a lot of the tests where the stupid kits "shine" (if you can call 12% advantage for a 300% price premium "shining").
  • fluxtatic - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    The 5970 and 5870 are the same GPU. It might have been interesting to see if downclocking the 5870 to match the 5970 made any difference, but this isn't as odd as you seem to think. I would guess a 3- or 4- card tri- or quad-Crossfire setup would be less common, given that it isn't easy to find motherboards that can take 3 or 4 dual-slot cards.

    It's slightly skewed in that the setup is current-gen other than the video cards, but it is similar to the way quite a few people build. They don't necessarily build a brand-new box every couple years, but replace modularly - I went from an AM3 board with an Athlon64 processor to a PhenomII, to an AM3+ board (which necessitated a RAM upgrade), then replaced the video card twice. My video card is 3 generations old, but handles what I play just fine, so next time around will be another processor upgrade.

    Intel-land is a little different, since they change sockets more frequently and a lot of people didn't see it worth the expense to upgrade when there was socket compatibility (SB -> IB, for example), but this setup doesn't strike me as that unusual. If I dropped the kind of money it takes to get a triple Crossfire setup, I'd hang onto it until the games I played started to overwhelm it.
  • Hairs_ - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    A crossfire test is absolutely a valid metric, and testing with older generations of cpu and gpu is something I'm wholly in favour of. My issue is that if someone was buying a dual gpu setup, they would match the cards. If they upgraded after a time differential due to a budget concern, they might mix generations. I don't see a scenario where someone is buying dual+single, however, because if you had the budget to go for a top of the line dual card, you'd be better off with two cheaper cards in crossfire.

    Would people still have 4 gen old setups? Absolutely! Would they mix and match cards to suit a tight budget? Sure. Would any retail buyer follow *this* pattern? Vanishingly unlikely.
  • Egg - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link

    Wait, why wouldn't you use a 5970 and a 5870? Sure you lose a bit on clock speeds but it's exactly the same as triple 5870 otherwise, isn't it? And you save some slots.

    Perhaps someone wanted to do a really expensive water cooled microATX build with 4 slots. IDK, but it doesn't sound that farfetched in practice.

    I haven't done this, or CF'ed anything at all, so this is just my two cents...
  • Hairs_ - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link

    Why? Like I said, there's no physical reason why you *couldn't*, but people use crossfire/sli for the same reason people overclock: to get top-line performance out of a smaller budget. The other use scenario is someone who wants bragging rights and doesn't care about the cost.

    For the primary, that user is not going to pay for a top line dual card when they could get similar numbers from two lower end cards. For the secondary use case, if money is no object (which it would have to be), why wouldn't you have bought two 5970's?

    This example doesn't fit into any consumer behavior, so I have no idea why it would be used as a test.
  • Giffs - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link

    No idea if there is any point in using winrar 4.2
    But there is winrar 5.01 why not using the latest version? wouldn't it bring improvements on the software side and more accurate results of some sorte??
  • sinPiEqualsZero - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    Thanks for the writeup. I'm shopping for memory and am happy I got to read this first.

    Also, I noticed an issue: " More expensive kits do not always equal performance, and as our benchmarks go, higher specification kits might also have little affect" should be effect with an e.

    Thanks, Ian!
  • Hairs_ - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    There's no "might" about it. High spec kits make NO difference.
  • Hairs_ - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    I wonder how it is that the entirely arbitrary "Performance Index" which was devised for memory testing isn't at all borne out by real-world data. Yet the bald statement

    "From the data in our memory overview, it was clear that any kit with a performance index of less than 200 was going to have issues on certain benchmarks. The Corsair kit has a PI of 240, which is at the higher end of the spectrum."

    is still maintained.

    There are no facts to back this statement up, as proved in the tests. Are Anandtech reviews going to continue to ignore factual data in favour of preconceived assumptions? I hope not.
  • Ytterbium - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    Explicit Finite Difference, in this graph you have 1333 C9 mid pack and 1866 C9 at bottom, I assume this is typo?
  • Hairs_ - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    if you look at all the graphs, the results aren't consistent at all. The kit that top one graph can be bottom of the next. Furthermore, the differences between top and bottom scoring kits is negligible in almost all tests, so many of the differences in rank can be due to statistical variance rather than a meaningfully measured performance difference.

    E.g. in many tests, the fastest kit in terms of headline mhz (3ghz) is beaten by theoretically slower stuff.
  • Gen-An - Saturday, December 14, 2013 - link

    I wonder if Corsair has purposely set out to make this kit look bad. Every single review I've seen of the Vengeance Pro 2x8GB 2400C10 kit has been Ver4.21, which uses Samsung 4Gbit B-die ICs and are infamous for not being able to clock much higher than about DDR3-2500 or so. I have four sticks of these and they are Ver5.29 using Hynix 4Gbit MFR and I've done Super Pi 32M runs at DDR3-3000 12-15-15-45 and they are rock solid at DDR3-2666 11-13-13.
  • [email protected] - Sunday, December 15, 2013 - link

    Intel rocks!
  • WaltC - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link

    Interesting article....you mention "z-height"--what is that? Don't you mean Y-height? x=horizontal, y=vertical, z=depth...
  • Simplex - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link

    When will you test memory speed vs BF4 performance?
  • celestialgrave - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link

    So I would assume the benchmarks that show a clear hit going from 2x8gb to 4x8gb is more of an issue of the additional sticks vs the additional memory amount, so going from 2x8gb to 2x16gb wouldn't necessary see the same hit as the 4x8gb kit did?
  • Popskalius - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link

    do u guys overclock your ram?
    how about remove the brand's plastic covering so they're not too tall?
  • da.Boss - Tuesday, September 20, 2016 - link

    I have the Asus P8h67-M Pro mother board with 2x8 corsair vengeance pro ram, i can't find the xmp option can anybody help

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