Introduction

Choosing the right memory kit for you isn’t easy nowadays – especially if you factor in the recent hike in memory prices. It’s getting harder to decide just what is value for money, and what is cheap and nasty. Patriot’s 6GB (3x2GB) 1600MHz CL8 Vipers for X58 systems are reasonably priced currently at £150.00 Inc VAT (£120 before the memory hike) which is supposed to offer the enthusiast speed and performance, but without the price tag. Aggressive pricing – but are they actually aggressive?

About Patriot

Patriot Memory builds a full range of memory module and flash memory products, offering a perfect blend of quality and value. Established back in 1985, Patriot has since grown rapidly in the current market with their latest range of memory and SSDs. Patriot Memory ensures that every module meets or exceeds industry standards. The manufacturing process begins with high-quality components and ends with rigorous functional testing to ensure each module’s reliability and compatibility. Patriot Memory modules are approved by leading motherboard and system manufacturers such Intel, Tyan, Supermicro and Iwill.

Manufacturers Specifications:

• Extreme Performance PC3-12800 (1600MHz) 8-8-8-24
• Patriot Viper Heat Shields with integrated ACC (Aluminum Copper Composite) technology
• 100% Tested and Verified
• BTT Tested to ensure maximum performance
• 10 Year Warranty
• RoHS Compliant

Meet the Viper

Patriot Extreme Performance  is engineered to expand your gaming and overclocking options. These modules are designed to operate at 1600MHz and are available in 3GB and 6GB kit flavours. Equipped with Patriot ACC (Aluminum Copper Composite) technology, these modules are designed for maximum performance and stability under extreme overclocking conditions. This should dissipate the heat much more quickly than other modules helping to ensure longitvity and the maximum performance possible.

Tall heatspreaders are a love and hate thing. They may offer better cooling performance, but those stranded on the limits of air CPU cooling with tall tower heatsinks and multiple fans can be left hopeless with RAM allocation being impeded by the heatspreaders spiking peaks. The Viper’s are no exception in this case.

Tuned at a respectable 8-8-8-24 at 1600MHz, this tri-channel kit offers the end user the means to take there overclocks a bit further than your average RAM. Paired with some pretty mean looking heatspreaders, they should cope rather well under strain from higher than stock speeds and more voltage.

Aesthetically, this kit is very pleasing to the eye with the sky blue looks, black PCB, and heatspreaders that look the business. Of course, its not all about looks. This kit is the LLK version meaning low latency. Whether they can be tweaked further, we shall find out. However  initial impressions seem to bold well. On these spercific modules, Patriot use D9JNL chips from Micron. Although not the best, they are proven to overclock better with lower voltage than extreme voltage for higher clocks. On with the testing!

How We Test

As most modules are designed to run at high speeds, our tests look to show off what they can do both stock and overclocked. We use a variety of software to find the maximum clocks and timings each module can run at. Today we shall be using Everest, SiSoftware Sandra, and MAXXMEM². CPU-Z shall be playing a part in denoting what results we get. All overclocking is done within the BIOS and no overclocking software used in the Windows environment.

We will be looking at Read, Write, Copy (all MB/s), and Latency (ns) with regards to the applications used to test the memory. Each test was run 10 times and only the best results are represented.

Our Test System

- Intel Core i7 930

- Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7

- Patriot Extreme Vipers 1600MHz 8-8-8-24

- HIS 5850 1024MB

- Cogage Arrow CPU Cooler w/ San Ace H1011

- Fractal Design Newton R2 800W

- Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB

- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

*All testing was done open bench.

Overclocking

We went ahead and looked at what we could do from stock specifications of 8-8-8-24 w/ 1.66v at 1600Mhz. We tried to keep the system at 4.2Ghz with the Intel Core i7 930 wherever possible. Our stock QPI/VTT voltage was set at 1.45v with the system at an overclocked speed of 4.2Ghz. The vCore used was 1.325v stable.

When trying to tighten up the RAM, we were a little disappointed considering that the Crucial Ballistix Tracers we reviewed last month could be tightened better, although that is why you pay a premium the 1600MHz kit – other than the bling. We managed a not too bad 7-8-7-18 stable from 8-8-8-24 at stock settings outlined above. See below.

The next job was to see how far these sticks could be pushed to speed-wise with some respectable tight timings. Patriot claims these sticks are ‘extreme performance’ which could be true with regards to the speeds we achieved on our test rig. From stock 1600MHz, we obtained a very nice 2000MHz. Not only that, we achieved some timings of 9-9-8-24.

Not too shabby at all for a Tri-Channel kit costing roughly £120 before the price hike. Better still, this was achieved with only 1.7v over the stock 1.66v. If we compare that to Crucial’s Ballistix Tracers that needed 1.72v for 2000MHz, Patriot have done a good job choosing the low voltage chips of the D9JNL’s.

The Results

Settings Used:

- 1600Mhz 8-8-8-24 w/ 1.66v vDIMM & 1.45v VTT @ 4.2Ghz i7 930

- 1600Mhz 7-8-7-18 w/ 1.66v vDIMM & 1.45v VTT @ 4.2Ghz i7 930

- 2000Mhz 9-9-8-24 w/ 1.7v vDIMM & 1.55v VTT @ 4.2Ghz i7 930

Lavalys EVEREST Ultimate Edition

Lavalys 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.

 

MaxxMem²

The MaxxMem benchmark tests your computers raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score.

 

SiSoftware Sandra

SiSoftware Sandra is a 32- and 64-bit Windows system analyser that includes benchmarking, testing, and listing modules. It tries to go beyond other utilities to show you more of what is really going on under the hood, so you draw comparisons at both a high- and low-level in a single product.

 

Conclusion

This kit is priced (at the time of writing) at £150 Inc VAT which is fair to say is a storming price for a kit that can overclock 400MHz with some decent timings so you won’t need to worry about limiting your overclock and having to buy some more expensive memory, or settle for slower speeds at a lower ratio. If it wasn’t for the recent memory price increase last month, these modules would be a steal! It’s not as quite as good as Crucial’s Ballistix Tracers that are rated the same both speed and latency, but they cost a good £30 more.  With stock voltage and speeds, the kit we feel should have done better, but for the price you can’t really go wrong. Better still, this kit comes with a full 10 years of warranty – feel free to go a bit mental with them!

With tall copper heatspreaders, the memory kept cool throughout usage on our testing both stock and overclocked. Looking at the results with Everest latency, it would appear there may well be an anomaly with the Patriot Vipers at 2000MHz 9-9-8-24 scoring a cool 37.8ns over the Tracer’s 42.6ns at tighter 9-8-7-24 timings. However both kits were run under the same conditions and the same amount of times with the end result always the same. However this wasn’t the same with MaxxMem or SiSandra with the Tracer’s out top as expected.

Pros

- Aesthetics

- Overclocking

- Bang for buck performance on X58

- Heatspreaders keep cool

- 10 Year Warranty

Cons

- May have height issues with some heatsinks