VisionTek High Performance PC3-12800 8GB Kit Review

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Let's be honest; you think about RAM and companies like Corsair, G.Skill and Patriot come to mind. A brand that doesn't come to mind is VisionTek, and for good reason. It's not a market they've been in, until now. The question we ask ourselves is; can VisionTek compete in the highly competitive market that is the Memory market?

Pulling our VisionTek kit out of the package, we instantly notice that we're not dealing with some cheap heatsink which is always a good start. The heatsink itself is quite tall and like most companies who opt for this tall heatsink, it can cause problems with some large coolers, but most of the time you're able to swing those coolers around or opt for the RAM in slots 2 and 4 which sit a little further from the CPU cooler.

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We can see that one side of the RAM has the VisionTek logo, while the other side has the same logo along with the model information regarding the kit of RAM we're dealing with.

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Getting into specifics, we're dealing with two 4GB modules making up an 8GB kit that comes in at PC3-12800 or 1600MHz DDR. As you can see off the specification tag, we're dealing with a CL8 kit, but the specifics on the timings are 8-8-8-24-1T @ 1.65v.

When it came to achieving the speeds, I knew we wouldn't run into any problems and getting into Windows was an absolute breeze. You can see our CPU-Z validation here. Up and running in Windows, it was time to check out the performance we could get.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 18,511 MB/s / 17,544 MB/s, Copy speed of 20,067 MB/s and latency of 46.3ns.

Looking at the performance numbers, they sit where you would expect a 1600MHz DDR CL8 kit to sit. With the kit of course running so well at stock, it's time to get into the BIOS and see what we can do with the overclocking side of things.

Since we have little room to mess around with when it comes overclocking via the BCLK, we instead have to opt for the memory dividers that are present on the board. From 1600MHz DDR our next option is 1866MHz DDR. Unfortunately at the default timings we didn't run into any luck getting that up and running.

Relaxing the kit only slightly, though, we ended up in Windows at 1866MHz DDR with a 9-9-9-24 @ 1.65v setup. What was great, though, was the fact that we didn't need to move the Command Rate, so we got to stay at 1T. You can see our CPU-Z validation here. Up and running in Windows, it was time to check out the performance we could get.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 19,921 MB/s / 17,941 MB/s, Copy speed of 21,393 MB/s and latency of 43.7ns.

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You can see we got a nice little boost in performance with just everything being slightly improved thanks to the faster memory speed.

With that running well, I figured we'd try for 2133MHz DDR which is the next step up, but felt confident that it was going to be a no go zone and of course we didn't run into any luck. We did try to blow out the timings a little to 10-10-10-34-2T @ 1.65v, but we still didn't have any luck.

Before we finish up the testing side of things, we moved back to 1866MHz 9-9-9-24-1T @ 1.65v and pushed our CPU multiplier up to 52x so we boosted our overall CPU speed to 5.2GHz.

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You can see above from our screenshot that we get a really nice boost in overall memory performance. Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 22,669 MB/s / 25,658 MB/s, Copy speed of 24,770 MB/s and latency of 39.6ns.

I find myself pleasantly surprised with what VisionTek are offering. Sure, they haven't ventured into those super high speeds of 2133MHz DDR+; instead they've opted for some speed that's a little lower, while offering good timings. More importantly, they've opted for a setup that's just really stable and safe and is going to be nice and compatible.

All round, the VisionTek High Performance PC3-12800 8GB kit is a good memory kit. One issue at the moment is availability; we don't blame VisionTek on this, though, as they got the sample to us nice and early and it doesn't look like the new memory line has hit the channel yet. That will no doubt change in the coming weeks, though.

The other thing that I'd like to really see from them is some kind of series name for the memory. At the moment the only name we really have for them is "High Performance" and it's just not very exciting. I'd just love to see something like X-Ray VisionTek PC3-12800 8GB Kit...get it..."X-Ray Vision"...gawd I'm hilarious! But just some kind of series name would help make the kit stand out and possibly the RAM on a whole.

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VisionTek have entered the memory market in the right way by offering us something that's nice and stable and offers us some good overclocking potential. I'm looking forward to seeing VisionTek expand the line and hope they achieve success in their latest venture.

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