ADATA XPG Xtreme Series 2133MHz 16GB (2x 8GB) Dual Channel Memory Kit Review

1. Introduction2. ADATA XPG Xtreme 2133MHz Memory3. Configuring the BIOS & Overclocking4. System Configuration5. SiSoft Sandra6. PCMark 77. MaxxMem28. Super Pi9. WinRar10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

ADATA's competitive solid state drives have gained much praise from KitGuru over the past few months. Now the spotlight shines upon the company's memory department. Can the 16GB 2133MHz XPG Xtreme Series' flagship follow in the footsteps of its successful SSD cousins?

With 8GB DIMMs becoming increasingly affordable, it's ADATA's turn to freshen up its product series with the latest craze in the memory world. The XPG, or Xtreme Performance Gear, series of memory offers capacities of 4GB, 8GB and 16GB kits for its dual-channel line-up. Single-channel 2GB and 4GB modules are also available.

Speeds of 1600MHz and 2133MHz are available from the XPG Xtreme Series. The latter features 10-11-11-30 timings, with the former utilising a tight 7-9-7-21 configuration. Can today's 16GB 2133MHz 10-11-11-30 kit deliver the performance required to earn an award?

Specifications:

• PC3-17000 (2133MHz).
• Timings: 10-11-11-30.
• Voltage: 1.65V.
• XMP Ready.
• 2x 8GB kit.
• Sepia-gold aluminium heatsink.
• Lifetime warranty.

ADATA uses a simple plastic, clamshell packaging to house a pair of 8GB 2133MHz DIMMs. Speed and capacity are outlined on the packaging, but there isn't any information about the timings listed – you have to look at the memory label for that.

A sepia-gold coloured aluminium heatsink is used to dissipate heat from the high-speed 2133MHz memory chips.

A star pattern, ADATA's logo and the Xtreme Series product line, into which this kit falls, help conceal the modules' simplistic appearance.

The accommodating 31.5mm height of the heatsink-equipped modules should keep CPU cooler interference to a minimum.

An ugly green PCB that has been used by ADATA should have little effect on a system's appearance, thanks to the heatsinks which help mask it.

A sticker that indicates the kit's part number, model name, timings and voltage resides towards the heatsink's lower-right corner.

The frequency isn't actually listed on this sticker, but we are certain that most people looking to buy this RAM will be able to figure out the speed from the kit's “DDR3 2133X” model name.

ADATA's attractive heatsinks are well-suited for use with a variety of motherboard colour schemes.

We are using the Asus P8Z77-V motherboard to test today's memory kit. It supports RAM from many manufacturers and gives us a large amount of flexibility to tinker with memory multiplier, base clock and timings settings.

ADATA makes use of an XMP-2133 profile which automatically configured the XPG kit's frequency, timings and voltage settings. Everything was set correctly with our motherboard, but we would recommend that you check the settings to avoid system instability.

CPU-Z highlights the memory's various frequency and timings settings. The XMP profile worked perfectly, loading a 2133MHz 10-11-11-30-1T configuration instantaneously.

Our system's CPU-Z validation can be found here.

We kept the memory voltage at a BIOS setting of 1.650V and relaxed the timings to 12-12-12-30-2T before aiming to improve the memory frequency. Increasing the motherboard’s ‘DRAM Current Capability’ to 130% and ‘DRAM Power Phase Control’ to Extreme allowed us to push the memory as far as possible.

The 2,200MHz setting proved too easy for ADATA's XPG memory kit; our system managed to successfully post all of the way up to a frequency of 2400MHz using the 24x memory multiplier.

We could actually post and boot into Windows using a 2448MHz frequency via a 102MHz base clock, but, upon running benchmarks and stress tests, this setting proved to be unstable.

1.700V was required to maintain absolute stability at a memory frequency of 2448MHz. Increasing the base clock to 103MHz in search of a 2472MHz memory frequency proved a step too far.

A 15% speed increase from a small – 50mV – voltage bump is commendable for a large-capacity, high-speed memory kit.

With our stable overclock frequency achieved, it was time to see how tight we could get the timings.

We couldn't push below the 12-12-12-30-2T timings that we had already used to achieve our 2448MHz frequency overclock; the kit simply wasn't offering stability with any lower values.

We were pleased to break the 2400MHz barrier with ADATA's XPG Xtreme Series memory kit. A final overclock of 2448MHz with 12-12-12-30-2T timings is impressive, even if the configuration did require a small voltage increase.

You can view our overclocked CPU-Z validation here.

Today we are using an Intel Core i5 3570K processor with our Asus P8Z77-V motherboard.

We will be testing the ADATA XPG Xtreme Series memory kit at:

Stock speed – 2133MHz – 10-11-11-30-1T @ 1.650V

OC Speed – 2448MHz – 12-12-12-30-2T @ 1.700V (CPU at 3.47GHz as a result of the 102MHz base clock)

Test System:

• Processor: Intel Core i5 3570K.
• Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V.
• CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems.
• Graphics card: Radeon HD 6870 1GB.
• Power supply: Corsair TX650.
• Storage drives: 128GB Kingston V100 (OS), 1TB Samsung F3, 320GB Seagate 7200.12.
• OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Asus P8Z77-V system comparison memory:

• 8GB ‘generic' 1600MHz CL9.
• 8GB ‘generic' 1333MHz CL9.
• 8GB Patriot Viper 3 Intel Extreme Master Limited Edition 2133MHz.

NOTE: We haven’t tested many memory kits on this Z77-based test system, so we felt it would be worth including results from our  Dual Channel Z77 system featuring the 3770K processor. Obviously these results shouldn't be used as a direct comparison, but more to highlight a wider overview of performance levels between the various Intel platforms.

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 comparison system:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k.
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard.
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2.
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD.
Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB.
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 system comparison memory:

• 8GB Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz
• 8GB G.Skill TridentX 2400mhz

Software:

• SiSoft Sandra
• PCMark 7
• MaxxMem 2
• Super Pi
• WinRar

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Memory bandwidth results show that 2133MHz kits offer excellent performance. A noteworthy improvement is registered by the 315MHz speed bump provided by overclocking.

Overclocking ADATA's XPG Xtreme Series memory kit to a frequency of 2448MHz allows the 120GB/s bandwidth barrier to be broken.

A combination of high frequency and relatively tight timings projects ADATA's XPG memory kit to the top of our chart.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Operating at 2133MHz with 10-11-11-30 timings, the ADATA XPG Xtreme Series memory kit is able to help our system acquire a PCMark 7 score of more than 4,000 points.

MaxxMem2 PreView is a handy, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here.

When overclocked, the ADATA XPG memory kit is able to offer the best MaxxMem2 performance that our i5 3570K test system has seen.

The 16 gigabytes of 2133MHz XPG Xtreme Series memory demonstrates good latency scores when operating at stock and overclocked speeds.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors and memory. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU. This program will also allow us to outline performance gains created by overclocked CPU and RAM frequencies.

Increasing the ADATA memory's frequency to 2448MHz provides a healthy performance improvement in Super Pi, although, the increased CPU speed is also a large contributor.

WinRar is one of the most popular archive manager programs available. It can backup your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You can try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available in downloads.

WinRar's built in benchmark and hardware test can help us indicate performance gains experienced by overclocking our memory.

The 5,000KB/s resulting speed hurdle is easily overcome by ADATA's 2133MHz memory kit. A 315MHz frequency increase provides a 2.9% performance boost – an improvement that is likely to be within the margin of error of WinRar's benchmark component.

Targeting users that require ultra-fast, high-capacity memory, ADATA has produced another great product in its 16GB XPG Xtreme Series 2133MHz memory kit. The sticks are fast, greater frequencies are easily-achievable and the heatspreaders are low profile – all features that the enthusiast crowd craves.

Overclocking the memory provided much success. A final frequency of 2448MHz with a 0.050V voltage increase was impressive for a 16GB memory kit. The fact that we could retain the stock voltage of 1.65V and take this kit up to 2400MHz with complete stability was also commendable.

Tightening the timings back towards their 10-11-11-30-1T rated value proved to be difficult with a high frequency overclock already having been achieved. We have no doubt that the kit's timings can be tightened past their reference values, but this may require a compromise in the memory frequency.

With a successful overclock of 2448MHz using a perfectly acceptable loosening of the timings to 12-12-12-30-2T, ADATA's XPG Xtreme Series 16GB memory kit was able to offer the best performance that has been observed on our i5 3570K test system. Even at stock speeds, the XPG memory proved too fast for Patriot's competing Viper 3 Intel Extreme Masters kit, surpassing its performance in all but one of our benchmarks.

Priced at £143.99 from Overclockers, the ADATA XPG Xtreme Series memory kit isn't cheap, but that is to be expected of such a fast, high-density product.

If you are planning on purchasing an ultra-fast, high-capacity memory kit, ADATA's XPG Xtreme Series 2133MHz 16GB product is a great choice. It overclocks very well, utilises short heatspreaders and is backed by a lifetime warranty.

Pros:

• Very good performance.
• Heatspreaders don't extend past the PCB.
• Excellent overclocking headroom.
• Tight timings given its frequency and price tag.
• Colour will fit most schemes.

Cons:

• Plenty of tough competition in today's market.

KitGuru says: An excellent performer that has the headroom to push past 2400MHz on stock voltage.

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