G.Skill Trident Z 3400MHz CL16 16GB DDR4 Review

Our testing is conducted using an overclocked Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake processor and the Asus Maximus VIII Hero Z170 motherboard.

The G.Skill Trident Z 3400MHz memory kit's XMP configuration is: 3400MHz 16-18-18-38-2T @ 1.35V.

Note: CPU and CPU Cache frequencies for the 3400MHz G.Skill Trident Z memory kit are different to what is ussual. This is due to the 3400MHz memory's use of an approximately 102MHz BCLK (102MHz BCLK, with a 133:100 DRAM:BCLK ratio, and 25x memory divider gives approximately 3400MHz for the DRAM frequency) which then changes the CPU and CPU Cache speeds.

As such, we reduced the CPU and CPU Cache multipliers by one level in order to closely match the 4.7GHz and 4.5GHz respective frequency used for comparison memory testing. The CPU was eventually clocked at 4.69GHz with the CPU Cache running at 4.49GHz. These approximately 10MHz speed deficits will have a minor effect on the performance numbers shown by the G.Skill-based system.

DDR4 Memory Z170 Test System:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K Overclocked (~102MHz BCLK, 4.69GHz CPU OC, 4.49GHz CPU Cache).
• Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero (Z170) (BIOS 1302).
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 980 Ti Reference.
• System Drive: 250GB Crucial BX100 SSD.
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional with SP1 64-bit.

Comparison memory:

• 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz 16-18-18-36 DDR4 @ 1.35V.
• 16GB (2x8GB) GeIL Dragon RAM 3000MHz 14-16-16-35 DDR4 @ 1.35V.
• 16GB (2x8GB) Generic JEDEC 2133MHz 15-15-15-36 DDR4 @ 1.20V.

Tests:

• AIDA64 Engineer – Memory read, write, and latency tests.
• Cinebench R15 – All-core CPU benchmark.
• 7-Zip 15.05 beta – Manual 1.23GB 1080P video archival.
• HandBrake 0.10.2 – Convert 1.23GB 1080P game recording using the High Profile setting and MP4 container.
• Grand Theft Auto V – 1920 x 1080, maximum quality, 0x AA.

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