16GB on a Skulltrail workstation?

Note that these are the first FB-DIMM modules of this density tested by us to successfully reach this performance level. Even the 2GB modules by Micron and Nanya couldn't go beyond 5-4-5-10 after all attempts. So, memory tuning is possible even on very high capacity FB-DIMMs after all, and Hynix, a company not often associated with overclockable performance memory, is the unexpected beneficiary here.

With an 8cm fan mounted to cool the FB-DIMM modules, the temperature only went up by about 2C from 43C to 45C for the modules, not bad as the ambient test room temperature today was 34C anyway - this is Singapore after all. Can some cooler weather visit us instead for a change?

Any benefit in the results over the usual 5-5-5 timing? Well, a jump from 8.2 to 8.45GB/s in Sandra 2009 SP1 bandwidth results, and from 102ns to 95ns in latency results - this latency comes close to many high end UP desktops then. I didn't overclock the CPU this time at all for this purpose.

As you can also see, while our Hynix-enhanced Dual quad-core has pretty nice latency, the memory bandwidth test of a Xeon 5500 - Nehalem or Gainestown DP with i5500 Tylersburg DP chipset and six channels of DDR3-1333 registered memory will still be 4.5x faster than a dual-socket Xeon 5400 Skulltrail or equivalent.

Numbers!

The problem is, we may have to wait till sometime early next year for more of these to appear. In the meantime, a dual socket, 8-core setup like Skulltrail or Asus Z7S-WS (the powerful Xeon FSB overclocker workstation mobo - the next test target for these modules), coupled with a quad set of 4 GB DIMMs like this Hynix spread, will give you a taste of a super workstation with performance tuning potential to boot.