Super Talent 8GB DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory Review

At Overclockers, we rarely present cheaper, more standard products, but not all users need pricey high-end memory. For all who are searching for cheaper RAM, I wish to present Super Talent 8 GB DDR3-1600 kit. Let’s take a look at Super Talent memory and find out if it meets your expectations.

Specification and Photo Gallery

In the standard plastic box we can find two 4 GB sticks of memory, so an 8 GB kit without additional heatspreaders. There is no additional information about support contact, warranty, or anything else as we are used to seeing on a memory package.

 Specification

• Product Number:  W1600UX8GV
• Rated speed:  DDR3-1600 / PC3-12800
• Density:  2×4 GB ( Dual Channel )
• SPD Profile:  1600 11-11-11-28 1.50 V
• XMP Profile:  none

Yes, as you probably noticed there is no XMP profile. Memory is marked as CL9 and that’s all. There is no specification with even basic timings, but I assume it will be DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24 and I will test this memory at these settings.

Motherboards see SuperTalent DDR3-1600 memory as 11-11-11-28 using auto settings. Simply, there is no shortcut and you have to set timings manually.

Below is full timing list set by Gigabyte Z87X-OC motherboard. Main timings were set manually.

Here is also CPU-Z screenshot as many users can’t live without this software …

Super Talent used Micron D9QBJ chips, so the IC is designed to work at 800 MHz ( DDR3-1600 ) 11-11-11 and 1.35 V. We can also see that maximum operating temperature for these chips is 95 °C, so we don’t have to worry that they will overheat without additional cooling or heatsinks.

Now let’s take a closer look at Super Talent Value DDR3-1600 CL9 …

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Stability Testing

The Super Talent memory passed a couple of hours Memtest86+ 5.00 RC1, so I assume it’s stable enough. This is the latest version of Memtest86+ which is multi-threaded, so it’s also stressing memory controller much more.

There were no issues during Memtest at the declared by manufacturer settings, and no issues when using Windows software, so I think we can move to performance testing.

Performance Testing

Test System

• Intel Core i7 4770K @ 4.2 GHz
• Gigabyte Z87X-OC
• Corsair HX850, 850 W 80+ Silver PSU
• Crucial M4 64 GB AHCI
• Windows 7 Ultimate

Memory Kits

• SuperTalent 2×4 GB DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24
• Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 2×8 GB DDR3-1866 10-10-10-30
• Geil Veloce 2×4 GB DDR3-2133 10-11-11-30
• Kingston HyperX 10th Anniversary 4x4GB DDR3-2400 11-13-13-30
• G.Skill TridentX 2×4 GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12-31
• ADATA XMP V2 2×8 GB DDR3-2600 11-13-13-35

All memory kits were set to XMP profile (highest clocked one) settings declared by manufacturer. SuperTalent memory has no XMP profile so main timings were set manually while all other timings at auto.

Test Software

• HyperPi 0.99b
• AIDA64 Memory & Cache benchmark
• MaxxMem v1.99
• 7-Zip x64
• Cinebench 11.5
• CPU-Z 1.65
• ASUS MemTweakIT 2.00.01

HyperPi 0.99b

HyperPi 32M really likes fast memory, so it’s one of the best tools to compare memory kits. Best result was marked in red so we can see that Super Talent DDR3-1600 kit was about three minutes slower than the G.Skill DDR3-2400 !!!

MaxxMem v1.99

MaxxMem Preview v1.99 is showing us single threading memory performance.

Memory write isn’t bad in this benchmark as it based on CPU and memory controller speed, but memory read and copy don’t look so good. Memory copy result is nearly 5 GB/s worse while read is 2 GB/s worse than the second worst memory in this comparison.

AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark

3.0 version of AIDA64 brought us multi-threading tests, so memory bandwidth is much higher than in previous versions.

About 4 GB/s worse results in every test than the Crucial memory says a lot. We are used to seeing that DDR3-1600 CL9 memory is about as fast as DDR3-1866 CL10, but in this case it’s not even close in any of the bandwidth tests.

7-Zip x64

As we see in 7-Zip compressing-decompressing benchmark, the Intel Haswell memory controller can make good use of faster memory. Above DDR3-2133 mark there are no big changes, but below that mark the results are much lower. SuperTalent is far from other RAM in the comparison, achieving over 2 MIPS (Million Operations Per Second) and lower result than the average in this test.

Cinebench 11.5

Cinebench rendering benchmark is really popular among overclockers. It’s hard to say which memory is really best looking at this benchmark, but for sure there are some differences in the results depending on what memory kit we use. Super Talent, as expected, is again last but I wouldn’t call it any issue as all results are close to each other.

Overclocking

Not expecting much from value series memory, I started to overclock the Super Talent DDR-3 1600 CL9 kit and I was surprised. Memory is running stable at 1066MHz (DDR3-2133) 10-11-11-30 1N 1.60V. It’s a really good result, however I’m still disappointed looking at performance after overclock. We can compare it to Geil EVO Veloce DDR3-2133 10-11-11-30 2N memory, which in earlier tests was about 93 seconds faster in HyperPi.

Here is the maximum overclock result I was able to get. For some reason raising voltage above 1.75 V or setting more relaxed timings didn’t help to stabilize even 1200 MHz (DDR3-2400), but the memory was able to enter Windows at 1300 MHz (DDR3-2600) and not so loose 11-13-13 main timings.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

When someone mentions Super Talent, I have Elpida Hyper memory on my mind, which was very popular among overclockers couple of years ago. Looking at our DDR3-1600 review sample, I feel a bit disappointed. I realize it’s value series memory, but something is missing.

As we can see in the tests, performance is quite low. It may be caused by the memory’s single sided design, but with current availability of new ICs it’s hard to do something else to get 4 GB sticks no matter if we pick Micron, Hynix or Samsung.

Even if we skip performance, we expect to be able to use this product without any issues at least. Regular computer users who wish to build their PC, or at least add some more RAM to their existing computers, may have some problems as this memory doesn’t have XMP profiles and all settings have to be set manually to meet the declared specification. Here is the next issue, as there is no information on the memory or the package what is this specification except DDR3-1600 CL9. Motherboards will set this memory to 1600 CL11 or 1333 CL9 when we use auto settings. Also, the manufacturer website isn’t more helpful as provides exactly the same information as the memory label, so DDR3-1600 CL9 1.5 V.

I also can’t say that the price is good. After browsing online stores the cheapest offer that I found was ~$65, while most stores are selling this memory for at least $75. In this price we can actually find DDR3-1866 or even DDR3-2133 kits.

Overclocking is the only good side of this memory. 2133 10-11-11 settings are more than we can see in most available DDR3 2133 kits. This doesn’t change the fact that performance isn’t really good even at a higher clock, and results are much lower than the Geil Veloce which in this review is running at exactly the same main timings and clock.

Summarizing, Super Talent Value DDR3-1600 CL9 is just standard memory without any additional features or even average performance. Since there are better options at a similar price, so it’s hard to recommend this memory. If price was lower, then it could be good for really cheap desktop PC configurations. It’s not designed for overclocking, but that’s the only thing it’s good at, but overall performance is killing even that advantage.

~ Bartosz Waluk ( Woomack )