| G.Skill Sniper 1866 MHz DDR3 Memory Kit |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Memory | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Austin Downing | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 14 June 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz DDR3 Memory
Manufacturer: G.Skill Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by G.Skill. RAM is one of the basic building blocks of a computer system, and although the technology has changed over the years the same basic idea of quick temporary storage has been RAM's main purpose since its inception. Gamers have always wanted the fastest speeds possible but unfortunately, that meant that many of the fastest kits were very expensive. Since the introduction of DDR3 prices have plummeted and speeds have skyrocketed and a good set of 2 x 4GB RAM can be had for under $150. G.Skill understands this and has SKU's designed for every price range. G.Skill's most recent addition is its Sniper series of which we will be looking at the 1866Mhz F3-14900CL9D-8GBSR kit which is well priced $104.99 providing users above average speeds with relatively tight 9-10-9-28 timings. Benchmark Reviews will determine if this RAM is worth its price or if users are better off getting slower, less expensive SKU's. Years ago using the fastest possible memory was the only way to get the full potential out of a processor. This is because in the days before Sandy Bridge getting the highest clock possible was achieved using a combination of changing the clock multiplier and increasing the FSB or base clock. Because changing these also increased the base speed of the memory using the fastest memory possible was only the only way to push a processor to its upper limits. But things have changed since the Sandy Bridge platform debuted, the only effective way to overclock is to increase the clock multiplier of the K SKU's meaning that memory speed is less important for overclocking and therefore companies are concentrating on dropping prices and timings to compete with each other. As prices have dropped, users have started demanding more RAM for their systems. With that in mind G.Skill introduced the Sniper series with speeds ranging from 1333Mhz to 1866Mhz and designed specifically for Sandy Bridge users by utilizing speeds that are divisible by 266.6Mhz.
Benchmark Reviews wants to provide the most accurate information on the performance of components to its readers and therefore has a very specific way in which tests are run on components. For RAM, each set is run first run through Memtest86+ at its advertised speed to insure that that there are no errors. Once passed a combination of synthetic and application based benchmarks will be run a total of three times each. Once the results have been acquired the worst score of each test will be thrown out and the final two will be averaged resulting in the final score that will be presented to our readers.
Closer Look: G.Skill Sniper 1866MhzUnlike cases, the aesthetics of RAM will not be something that a user will need to deal with on a daily basis. This means a user can pick the ugliest piece set of ram they can find and as long as it has the same timing, and speed will perform just as well as a tricked out set of RAM. None-the-less enthusiast with Plexiglas windows on their case may want RAM that goes along with the color scheme being used in their system.
G.Skill uses the typical blister pack that many RAM manufactures opt to use. This allows G.Skill to show off both the specs and aesthetics of the Sniper RAM kit.
G.Skill has styled the top of the Sniper modules to look like the barrel and sights of a rifle. At the same time the Sniper badge is a nice addition to the exterior of the Sniper kit.
For the Sniper series G.Skill has used black PCB with a black gunmetal cooler applied to the IC's underneath. Like all other DDR3 RAM these coolers are purely cosmetic, as the lower voltages that DDR3 uses mean that the IC's do not heat up enough to require coolers.
Using the standard layout for model numbers, G.Skill has made an easily decodable string of letters and numbers. F3 describes the technology that the Sniper kit uses, which in this case it translates to DDR3. Following this is the PC3 rating which is 14900 that when divided by eight will give you the proper DDR3 speed. Next is the CL rating, which for the Sniper series is CL9 and which ends in a D which stands for dual since this a dual channel kit. Next to last is the 8GB which describes the entire size of the kits. Lastly we have the SR which is the model ID.
With a cooler that measure 1.625" in height the Sniper series uses a relatively small cooler that easily fits under my Scythe Mugen 2 cooler even with the fan sitting over the RAM slots. G.Skill F3-14900CL9D Specifications
Supported Motherboards
RAM Testing & ResultsTesting MethodologyWhen testing RAM the preferred method is to remove as many bottlenecks as possible. This ensures that any changes in the benchmarks are dependent on the RAM that is being tested as much as possible. For this reason no games have been included because at the moment games are far more dependent on computers GPU's and CPU's, rather than their memory subsystems. Instead the tests used will be focused on more memory intensive tasks such as fluid dynamics simulations, compression, and real-time rendering. These benchmarks will be run alongside traditional benchmarking tests that will scale more effectively with speed but will be an unrealistic indication of real world performance. In order to test each RAM kit in the most effective fashion a multistep process was required. First, in order to verify the advertised speed each set of RAM they will be initially run the Memtest86+ for one run. Once no errors are found, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit with all of the need tools will be loaded. In order to make sure that fluctuations in other subsystem do not influence the scores, each test will be run a total of three times. At the end of the benchmark the lowest score will be dropped and the final two scores will be averaged. The applications being used for benchmarking will be as follows.
Test System
Memory Test
Because each IC produced is slightly different and will have different overclocking characteristics any overclocking results obtained may vary from user's actual experience. In the end this means that spending the time to overclock our system memory will be unbeneficial to our readers and therefore will be omitted from the results except for in special cases, such as when a product is advertised as having a great amount of headroom. We have recently introduced the Euler3D Computational Fluid Dynamics benchmark into our memory test suite and so I would like to give a small explanation as to what is being used. Our newest test simulates the fluid dynamics of a wing and therefore is very memory and CPU intensive. Each test is run and the final result is given in Hertz(Hz). For our purposes the final Hertz score is what will be used for comparing each set of memory to its competitors. It has been found that this benchmark is particularly sensitive to both memory speed and timing and therefore makes a perfect benchmark to add to Benchmark Reviews memory suite. Synthetic BenchmarksBenchmark Reviews uses synthetic benchmarks to more effectively show difference between the hardware being tested. These tests are very sensitive to the most minor changes and therefore can highlight the performance difference that exist between different sets of RAM.
AIDA64 provides a memory benchmarking tool that scales well with speed but unfortunately does not respond nearly as well to tightening timings. The increase in performance from the Mushkin Redline Enhanced 1600Mhz 7-8-7-24 is around 7% for the Read Benchmark increasing from 20264MB/s to 21746.5MB/s. At the same time the G.Skill Sniper performed about 3.5% better at write tests then the Mushkin Redline Enhanced 1600Mhz 7-8-7-24 at 23572.5MB/s
One of our newest benchmarking applications MaxxMEM2 provides results that are responsive to speed change. The G.Skill Sniper provides 8.3% more bandwidth at 22437.5MB/s compared to our low latency 1600Mhz 7-8-7-24 set of RAM. The write performance is far less interesting with only a ~3% difference between the Sniper and the Redline Enhanced 1600Mhz memory. The last score is an overall memory score in MB/s which has G.Skill's Sniper performing roughly 5% better than the Redline Enhanced 1600Mhz at 22605MB/s.
Using STREAM SiSoft's Sandra provides a near linear performance increase as the speed of RAM increases. While testing I found that moving from G.Skill's RipJaw at 1600Mhz with 9-9-9-24 timings to the Sniper series at 1866Mhz with 9-10-9-28 timing provided a 12% boost in bandwidth moving from 21GB/s to 23.84GB/s for integer buffered performance. The difference in performance provides close to the 14.3% difference in speed that exists between the G.Skill Sniper and RipJaw memory sets that we tested. Application BenchmarkApplication benchmarks are a look at real world performance of the memory being tested. During this review we will be employing a combination of rendering, compression, and simulation to see how timing and speed of memory affects their performance.
Much like games that use DirectX or OpenGL to render their scenes CINIBENCH sees very little in gain by using higher performance RAM. Between the G.Skill RipJaw 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 and the G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 around .5% performance difference well within our 1% margin of error.
UUsing the benchmarking tool that was built into WinRAR 4.00 we were able to effectively gauge how many kilobytes per second our test bed was able to compress. WinRAR is responsive to speed and timings and as such our Mushkin 1600Mhz 7-8-7-24 was able to surpass both of our looser 1866Mhz kits. Still compared to the G.Skill RipJaw 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 we were able to gain a respectable 6% boost in our compression bandwidth moving from 4019kB/s to 4267.5kB/s.
The speed of Euler 3D simulation is obviously sensitive to both speed and timings. At 1866Mhz with 9-10-9-28 timings the G.Skill Sniper provide around 10% more performance than the G.Skill RipJaw 1600Mhz 9-9-9-28 at 5.7185Hz compared to 5.1825Hz. Although this may not seem like a useful increase in performance since the calculation being done by this program can be run for days or weeks a 10% increase can be a huge difference in time for long term simulations. G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz Final ThoughtsRAM is a vital component to any computer and the G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 (2 x 4GB) kit fits perfectly in any high performance system. It provides a discernable difference in high performance applications, and with a total of 8GB of RAM per kit it will help ensure that users are not utilizing swap making for an overall more enjoyable computing experience. Along with performing well this RAM kit looks nice and has a color scheme that will fit well in many modern systems, along with a cooler that will fit under even the largest of coolers including the Scythe Mugen 2.
G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz ConclusionPerformance is as you would expect from a set of 1866Mhz memory. It provides little to no performance benefit in benchmarks that are dependent on the video subsystems due to video cards being the bottlenecks for our current generation of games and tools. On the flipside computationally heavy applications such as compression and simulation benefit from faster memory and can gain a 6-10% performance boost just by moving from 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 to a 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 kit. Although appearance is a matter of personal preference I love the black gunmetal finish that G.Skill has adopted for the Sniper series. It is not too showy and will look great in many of systems that are being built from recent generations of hardware. These would look particularly stunning in a P67 Sabertooth system as the military look of that board, combined with the gun like appearance of this RAM would go together quite well. The construction of the G.Skill Sniper series is superb, with a well made cooler that doesnt flex. Performance of RAM is based around being able to function at the manufactures specified speed without errors. G.Skill's Sniper performed flawlessly when run through Memtest86+ at the pre-specified XMP profile of 1866Mhz at 9-10-9-28 at 1.5v. This is an amazing feat considering the voltages we were looking at a few years ago to reach speeds of this caliber when DDR3 had just debuted. Priced for $104.99 at Newegg, G.Skill has lined up the Sniper series to fit perfectly in the market. The 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 sector of the market sits completely within +/-$10 of the G.Skill Sniper 1866Mhz kit and therefore it ends up being up to the user to pick what design or company they prefer. G.Skill has hit a homerun with the Sniper 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 1.5v memory kit. It provides a nice boost in performance in computationally heavy benchmarks, is well priced, and has an aesthetically pleasing exterior that is short enough to fit under almost any cooler. Due to this Benchmark Reviews will award G.Skill's Sniper 1866Mhz kit the Golden Tachometer award. Pros:
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Comments
##intel.com/consumer/game/extreme-memory.htm
Is the chart displaying this kit @ diff mhz(s)? OR Are the 1600, 2100, 1866, ect all separate kits. if so maybe you could label them, because they have no names.
(If they are different kits) Can this kit be OCed to 9,10,9,27 DDR2133? with a voltage bump. What is the max votage of this kit? 1.7v? Just wondering.
Thanx for reading and replying if you have time.
They are each different kits, I found that if I added labels I had to make the font far to small I will see what can be done to alleviate this problem.
If you look at the RAM Testing and Results I list the kit's that were being tested.
Thank you for the input!
any feedback or suggestions for ram would be helpful, I'm looking for 12-16Gb of 1600-1866mhz, I'm interested in overclocking it later, I play a lot of games competitively and I run multiple programs at once often including programs like photoshop.
thanks for your time ^__^
Thanks.
Have a kit on the way I picked up for $54 but will return them if they can not do cas 8!
ihave AMD phenom ii x6 1100T
which do you guys think would be best? I cant find a direct comparison.