Super Talent Chrome Series PC3-16000 (2000MHz) 12GB Kit

Introduction, Packaging and Modules

Introduction



It's been ages since we've seen anything from Super Talent, but when we saw a press release from the company announcing a new 12GB kit, it was time to chase up a sample of a new kit of RAM to test.

Over the last few months we've seen some larger memory kits arrive which is a bit of a sign of the times. Cheap memory and the ability to offer higher MHz on higher density kits means we're seeing some pretty fast high capacity memory kits.

While not quite as large as the 24GB kit we looked at from Kingston a bit back, this PC3-16000 kit is packing with it quite a decent stock clock speed; higher than we've seen to date from 4GB modules with even the A-DATA 8GB Dual Channel kit carrying only 1600MHz DDR.

Before we get into too much detail, though, let's look what's going on with the package and the modules themselves.


The Package





There's not much to the package. You can see the kit through the clear packaging with one module letting you know the main details of the kit. It's all around very basic, but we see this quite often from memory companies with some giving us nothing more than a brown box.


The Modules





The kit itself is really shiny thanks to the chrome finish. I suppose that's why Super Talent call it the Chrome Series. To be honest, the kit itself is quite boring when it comes to heatsink design. In saying that, it feels fantastic; the quality can really be felt. It goes to show sometimes we don't need all these fancy heat pipes protruding out every possible angle.

As for labeling, we've got the Super Talent logo on one side and the other has all the boring information like the model and main specifications of the kit. We won't go into much detail as we'll cover that on the next page.

Overclocking

Out of the box this 12GB kit that consists of three 4GB modules carries with it a 2000MHz DDR clock and a 9-10-9-28 timings setup. We're not sure if the kit utilized a 1T or 2T setup since we couldn't find information outside of just the standard timings, but we tried 1T and we didn't run into any problems at 1.65v.



You can see the validation here.

When it came to overclocking we really had no luck. We started at 2100MHz and couldn't get a post, moved to 2050MHz DDR and had the same issue. At around the 2020MHz mark we could get into Windows, but such a small gain isn't worth worrying about.

It's important to remember that 4GB modules are in themselves harder to achieve greater speeds with. When you then combine that with the need to get that on three modules instead of two, the job becomes even more difficult. It would've been nice to see a few more MHz, but the fact that we had no problems at stock speed is the main thing.


Important Editor Note: Our maximum overclocking result is the best result we managed in our limited time of testing the memory. Due to time constraints we weren't able to tweak the motherboard to the absolute maximum and find the highest possible FSB, as this could take days to find properly. We do however spend at least a few hours overclocking every motherboard to try and find the highest possible overclock in that time frame. You may or may not be able to overclock higher if you spend more time tweaking, or as new BIOS updates are released. "Burn-in" time might also come into play if you believe in that.

Test System Setup and wPrime

We would like to thank the following companies for supplying and supporting us with our test system hardware and equipment: Intel, ASRock, Sapphire, Western Digital, Noctua and Corsair.

We'll have a look at the Super Talent 12GB PC3-16000 kit against a few kits today including the Kingston 24GB one, A-DATA 8GB Dual-Channel kit along with a few other 6GB triple channel kits.

Let's get started!

Important Note: When modules are overclocked we adjust the BCLK which not only lets us fine tune the MHz out of a module, but in turn increases the overall CPU clock speed. While we always make the effort to include the BCLK and CPU Speed in our graphs, please just make sure that you make note of these when looking at the results. In some tests that don't purely test the memory speed the extra MHz on offer from the CPU can increase the result. Of course, it's worth noting that having faster memory gives you the ability to run your CPU at a higher speed.


wPrime

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.62
Developer Homepage: http://www.wprime.net/
Product Homepage: http://www.wprime.net/




wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.



Mainly dependent on the CPU, we see the Super Talent kit sit a little further in the pack here.

Benchmarks - Everest Ultimate Edition

Everest

Version and / or Patch Used: Ultimate Edition
Developer Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=3&ps=UE&lang=en
Buy It Here




EVEREST Ultimate Edition is an industry leading system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts PC users, based on the award-winning EVEREST Technology. During system optimizations and tweaking it provides essential system and overclock information, advanced hardware monitoring and diagnostics capabilities to check the effects of the applied settings. CPU, FPU and memory benchmarks are available to measure the actual system performance and compare it to previous states or other systems. Furthermore, complete software, operating system and security information makes EVEREST Ultimate Edition a comprehensive system diagnostics tool that offers a total of 100 pages of information about your PC.



Looking at memory performance, we can see the Chrome Series kit from Super Talent performs very strong.

Benchmarks - SiSoft Sandra

SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: Professional Home
Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk
Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en
Buy It Here




SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.



Sandra performance like Everest again sees the kit perform strong out of the gate.

Benchmarks - Sciencemark

ScienceMark 2.0

ScienceMark 2.0 is a mathematical program designed to stress the memory subsystems of both desktop/workstation and server environments to determine the read/write latency as well as the overall memory bandwidth available between the CPU and the memory controller.



Sciencemark performance is fairly inline with all the kits which are running around the same CPU speed.

Benchmarks - Far Cry 2

Far Cry 2

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.03
Timedemo or Level Used: Ranch Long
Developer Homepage: http://www.ubi.com
Product Homepage: http://www.farcry2.com
Buy It Here




The Dunia Engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2 by the award-winning Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers the most realistic destructible environments, amazing special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storm effects, real-time night-and-day cycle, dynamic music system, non-scripted enemy A.I. and so much more.



Far Cry 2 Performance is fairly standard; a minimum over 40 and an average in the mid 80s mark.

Total Performance Rating (TPR) and Final Thoughts

Total Performance Rating

The TPR graph is a combination of all our benchmarks in which we test our memory modules with.

The TPR number is a combination of:-

wPrime Benchmark, Everest Ultimate, SiSoft Sandra, Sciencemark 2.0 and Far Cry 2.

Due to the nature of some benchmarks where scores having a lower is better result, we've had to change the way we do the numbers when compared to our video card ones. Far Cry 2, SiSoft Sandra and Everest Ultimate numbers are all combined. In Sciencemark 2.0 and wPrime Benchmark where a lower number is better, we have a base number of 300. The score we get from the kit is then removed off that number. There's a total of 600 base points.

For example; if the wPrime Benchmark score is 193.266 and 6.297 for 1024M and 32M respectively, the number that is added to the graphs is 400. That number is obtained by using the following equation: 600 - 193.266 - 6.297 = 400.437. It's then rounded down to 400 in this case. In the event that the RAM was slower in wPrime, the total would be lower which represents our TPR graphs exactly how we want.



The Super Talent kit performs extremely well with it even outpacing some modules with higher clock speeds, yet looser timings.


Final Thoughts

While we didn't have much luck with overclocking, the out of the box performance is very strong considering the amount of RAM we're dealing with. Sure, Super Talent could've released an 1800MHz DDR kit that could achieve around 2000MHz DDR, but at least this way we're guaranteed to hit those speeds.

While we don't have the price on the actual Super Talent kit as yet, just going off other kits which follow similar speeds and timings, you'd be looking at a tad over $500; between $510 and $530 would be the best guess. Compared to 6GB kits it's more than double the price with 6GB kits carrying more aggressive timings coming in under $200 with ease.

While its overall memory speed should be no faster than a 6GB kit, depending on what you're using, the extra RAM could certainly speed things up. While for less you could buy two 6GB kits and fill all your RAM banks up, it's an option a lot of people prefer not to take as filling up all your banks can making achieving the stock speeds harder.

Super Talent are offering us a really nice amount of memory at a really good speed. For enthusiasts who don't want to sacrifice the amount of memory they have for speed, this is a fantastic option. I think it's also safe to say that it'll be a while before we see companies offer speeds higher than this when it comes to 4GB modules.

Super Talent hasn't had to resort to active cooling or insane heat spreaders to achieve some great speeds on a 12GB kit. If you've got the money and want 12GB without going down the path of 1600MHz DDR modules, this is a really fantastic option.