A great triple-channel kit for Nehalem fans!
If we are to call ourselves enthusiasts, we need the very latest and greatest in tech. Well, Nehalem is that tech, and it brings with it a whole new support for not only DDR3 memory - but triple channel too!
This means that three sticks, instead of the usual two, can be run together to provide a huge amount of bandwidth, pumping so much data to the system that it really is quite astounding. So when Corsair gave us a yell about their latest 6GB kit that was tailored specifically for Nehalem, we knew we had to give it some loving.
Stock speeds of this kit is pretty impressive for the lower voltage they run at (Nehalem's memory controller runs at a default 1.5V, and 1.65V is the max supported by Intel - though this can be pushed higher, just like overclocking). The stock speeds afforded us a very large amount of read and write bandwidth, as well as good latency. These sticks were even able to be run at 7-7-7-21 at 1600MHz without any extra voltage, affording us a little higher bandwidth, and lower latencies.
Bumping them up in frequency, dropping the timings as needed, we pumped 1.72V through the sticks to get them stable. The performance increases in almost every test, only seeing a small decrease in wPrime performance. Keep in mind that this isn't a groundbreaking amount, but it is still nice to have that headroom available if you do get into heavy overclocking. Low latencies weren't worth running at all, with horrible scores, showing that Nehalem really likes the higher bandwidth to be kept happy.
This kit is very flexible, and a great choice for any enthusiast - just make sure you've got a 64-bit OS to use all that space!
Issue: 133 | February, 2012