Overclocking Results:

7-7-7-18 8-8-8-24 memory speed: 1820 MHz 1940 MHz If you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

Patriot Memory's 2GB low latency PDC32G1600LLK DDR3-1600 will be installed in a fantastic overclocking platform, the Asus BLITZ Extreme motherboard and an engineering sample Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 processor. With hardware this good, I think we can anticipate some exciting overclocking.

Let's begin.

By default, Patriot Memory's PDC32G1600LLK DDR3-1600 kit runs on 7-7-7-18 memory timings at 1.8V, so the first step is to see how far we can overclock here.

The memory frequency was increased in 20 MHz increments and the Patriot PDC32G1600LLK memory ran into its first roadblock at 1660 MHz. The memory voltage had to be increased to 2.0V to keep the system stable. That seemed to do the trick and the Patriot memory reached a nice 1800 MHz before the memory started to become unstable again. Increasing the memory voltage to 2.1V fixed that issue and allowed the memory to clock higher.

The Patriot PDC32G1600LLK reached a maximum speed of 1820 MHz with 7-7-7-18 timings which is pretty darn good. Anything higher though and the memory would cause the system to crash while running 3D benchmarks. Lowering the memory timings to 8-8-8-24, we're about to see how high the memory can run with lax timings.

With lax memory timings the Patriot memory overclocked quite a bit farther. The 1900 MHz mark easily fell but the memory wasn't able to go much further hitting its maximum speed at 1940 MHz. That's still not bad all things considered, this is supposed to be "low latency" DDR3 memory after all.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Patriot Memory PDC32G1600LLK DDR3-1600 memory test system was configured for benchmarking, including the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this pair of DDR3-1600 / PC3-12800 DDR3 memory is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results.

On Intel Socket 775 Core 2 Duo test systems, we're only interested in seeing how high we can go with the DDR3 memory running 1:2, as running with other dividers puts the overclocking bottleneck elsewhere and not with the system memory. The DDR3 RAM latency must run at its lowest possible setting, as quick access is more important to the CPU design. Just for arguments sake, we will also be conducting overclocking tests to see how high the memory will go with lax timings (8-8-8-24). Benchmarks will be run with which ever state garners better performance.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system processor: intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Clock Speed: 8 x 333 MHz = 2.66 GHz Motherboards: Asus BLITZ EXTREME (Intel P35 Express / DDR3) Videocard: MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC Memory: 2GB Kit Corsair DOMINATOR Twin3X2048-1800C7D (DDR3) 2GB Kit Patriot PDC32G1866LLK (DDR3) 2GB Kit Patriot PDC32G1600LLK (DDR3) Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Intel Reference Software Setup: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Intel INF 8.3.0.1013 nVIDIA Forceware 162.22 Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra XII WinRAR PCMark Vantage 3DMark06 Quake 4 FEAR