G SKILL RipjawsX F3-17066 CL7D 2133mhz (Sandybridge) Review

1. Introduction2. G SKILL Ripjaws F3-17066 CL7D 2133mhz (1)3. G SKILL Ripjaws F3-17066 CL7D 2133mhz (2)4. Testing Methodology and Overclocking5. KitGuru Photoshop Benchmark6. Aida 647. SiSoft Sandra8. 3D Stiudio Max 20119. Cinebench R11.5 64 bit10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

With the release of the stunning new Sandybridge platform from Intel, memory manufacturers are releasing kits designed specifically to maximise system performance. Today we look at a stunning new 4GB kit from GSKILL which operates at 2133mhz while maintaining the tightest possible timings.

In the past, getting memory close to 2,000mhz usually meant that timings needed to be relaxed for total stability, but not any longer. This G SKILL Ripjaws F3-17066 CL7D kit is sold to operate at 2,133mhz at tight timings of 7-10-7.

While GSkill are a relatively new company in the high end memory market they have quickly earned a reputation as delivering some of the finest memory to the demanding enthusiast user. Set to operate at 1.65Volts, we have high hopes that the additional overclocking potential might also be impressive.

The GSkill Ripjaws memory is packaged in a tough plastic container which offers reasonable protection during shipping.

We really like the Ripjaws heatspreaders, they aren't overly large and can be used under a Noctua NH D14 heatsink if carefully mounted. As discussed earlier they are set at timings of 7-10-7-27 with a programmed profile of 2,133mhz.

The thin heatspreader can be easily removed and reattached, by tugging on the underside. The black PCB looks great underneath.

For testing today we used the excellent ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Profess1onal motherboard (yes, the ‘1's are intentional).

We found that the ASrock Fatal1ty bios automatic settings enabled 1600mhz, but by manually forcing the XMP profile ‘1' setting, the board correctly adjusted them to 2,133mhz with a 1T command rate, CAS Latency of 7, RAS TO CAS Delay of 10 and a Row Precharge time of 27.

System validation can be viewed over here.

The Windows 7 Experience Index gives the memory a maximum score of 7.9 (ignore the graphics results, no driver was installed for testing).

Test System:
Processor: Core i7-2600k
Memory: GSkill Ripjaws 4GB 2133mhz
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200W
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Pro
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10
Graphics: AMD HD6850
Hard Drive: Intel 80GB SSD
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit

Comparison memory: No Brand DDR3 1333mhz 4GB 8-8-8-24

SiSoft Sandra
Adobe Photoshop CS5 64 bit
3D Studio Max 2011
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Aida 64 Extreme Edition

By increasing the system FSB we were able to push the memory to an incredible 2336 mhz with the same timings of 7-10-7-27 at 1T. If we relaxed the timings to 8-10-8-30 we could push up to 1210mhz (2420mhz), but the performance was better at the settings shown above.

This version of the script has been thoroughly tested on Adobe Photoshop CS5 and CS4 and is compatible with Photoshop 7. It is important to document however that different versions of Photoshop give different end results. Adobe have been fine tuning the program over the years and enhancing specific filters and algorithms for better performance (some filters were rewritten during the CS2 time period). This means ultimately that comparing times with users running other versions of Photoshop is not going to give consistent results.

All results were gained from Adobe Photoshop CS5 64bit exe on Windows 7 64 bit ultimate and are marked in seconds. Lower times are better.

KitGuru PS Bench 1(4)	Standard 1333mhz 8-8-8-24	GSKILL 2133 mhz 7-10-7-27	GSKILL 2336mhz 7-10-7-27
1. Texturiser (1)	1.9	1.9	1.9
2. CMYK	1.9	1.8	1.8
3. RGB	2.0	1.9	1.9
4. Ink outlines	29.8	29.4	29.2
5. Dust & Stratches	3.1	3.0	3.0
6. Watercolor	28.8	28.5	28.4
7. Texturiser (2)	2.0	2.0	2.0
8. Stained Glass	23.7	23.2	23.1
9. Mosiac Tiles	14.6	14.3	14.3
10. Extrude	164.2	162.1	161.9
11. Rough Pastels	12.7	12.4	12.3
12. Smart Blur	96.9	95.8	95.6
13. Underpainting	36.2	35.9	35.9
14. Mosiac Tiles	14.4	14.1	14.1
15. Spherize	2.9	2.8	2.8
16. Palette Knife	23.3	23.1	23.1
17. Sponge	41.3	40.2	40.1
18. Smudge Stick	13.1	12.7	12.6
Total:	512.8	505.1	504.0

The high memory speeds really help with Photoshop performance reducing the overall script time by around 7 seconds by moving from 1333mhz to 2133mhz. By increasing the speeds to 2336mhz another 1 second is reduced from the overall time, nothing significant.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The synthetic improvements are easily seen and go some way to explain the real world benefits during our Photoshop testing which we documented on the last page.

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) 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 increases from 22 GB/s at 1333mhz to around 29 GB/s at 2336mhz with our GSKILL Ripjaws kit. Huge gains all round.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a KitGuru custom created scene at 1920×1080 and record the time taken, lower is better.

By increasing the memory bandwidth and efficiency the taken taken to complete our render is reduced by a couple of seconds.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

Even though Cinebench R11.5 is primarily a CPU intensive test, system bandwidth and efficiency can effect the scoring, slightly. Our scores improved when moving to the faster GSKILL memory product.

We have reviewed other G SKILL products in the past and we have always been impressed with the performance of the Ripjaws series.

This latest Ripjaws F3-17066 CL7D 2133mhz kit specifically designed for the Sandybridge platform has exceeded our expectations, not only running at lightning fast speeds ‘out of the box', but showing good signs of overclocking headroom.

We managed to increase the speeds to 2366mhz while keeping the tight 7-10-7 1T timings. This didn't require any extra voltage for stability, holding stable at 1.65 volts on the ASRock Fatal1ty motherboard.

We placed a diode on the heatspreader and even when pushed to 2336mhz the temperatures hovered between 34-38c. This highlights that the Ripjaws heatspreader is more than capable of keeping these within safe thermal parameters at all times.

We can recommend this memory kit if you are lucky enough to be moving to the new Intel Sandybridge platform, they worked, without problem on a variety of Asus, ASrock and MSI motherboards that we have in our test labs right now.

KitGuru says: If you want ultimate performance for your new system, these should be on your shortlist.

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