The reasons to purchase a high performance RAM kit are as varied as the consumers who purchase them. For some application load time is the deciding factor in their purchasing decision. For others it is Virtualized Operating System performance. For others still it is game load times. For others still it is to shave a .1 of second off their synthetic test scores so as to climb ever higher in the online rankings that various sites host.
With such a wide variety of criteria it behooves us to use as wide and varied a list of testing protocols as possible. As such we have used a blend of synthetic and real world benchmarks, as well as custom real world game benchmarking.
For real world and video games we have used the same tests as we use for storage testing and created a RAMDrive. Specifically, we have used Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Saints Row 3.
For Saints Row 3 (labelled ‘SR3’ in the chart) we have recorded the load time from a specific save game. The game was saved just at the end of the ‘Shaundi saved’ version of “Three Way Ending” but before the cut scene. This was chosen as the game not only loads the Three Way Ending data but also the next level “Gangsta’s in Space” DLC level.
For the Call of Duty: Ghosts we timed the level load time for the map called Into the Deep in the single player game. This level was chosen as it contains a large map and loads a lot of data from the storage device to the GPU.
For synthetic tests we used a combination of SuperPi and AIDA tests.
For real world tests we used Adobe PhotoShop and VMWare.
The OS was a fresh clean install of Windows 7 with all latest hotfixes, patches and updates applied.
To show the performance differences we have tested at stock, ‘XMP’, and then manual overclocking levels. All tests were run 4 times and average results are represented.
Main Test System
Processor: Intel i7 5930K
Memory: 32GB Ballistix Elite DDR4-2666
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth X99
Cooling: Noctua U12S
SSD: 1x Intel 750 1.2TB NVMe SSD
Power Supply: Corsair AX860i
Monitor: Dell U2714H
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
