G.Skill Ripjaws4 DDR4-3000 16GB Memory Review

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The launch of the Haswell-E supporting X99 platform brought forth a highly anticipated new memory standard, the aptly named DDR4. With up to eight RAM slots per motherboard and a quad-channel memory interface, DDR4 is unquestionably a significant factor in this new enthusiast platform, both in terms of technological improvements and as part of the overall build cost of a new system.

With a DDR4 memory lineup that spans from JEDEC reference DDR4-2133 parts to an industry-leading DDR4-3333 memory kit, G.Skill's Ripjaws 4 series is incredibly comprehensive. In fact, not only are most speeds available in both 16GB (4x4GB) and 32GB (4x8GB) capacities but they have begun offering many of their memory kits in a choice of three colours: red, black, and blue. So on the consumers side what it really comes down to, is how much memory kit can you afford? Regrettably, like all new memory standards upon first release, DDR4 memory kits are expensive at the moment when compared to their DDR3 predecessors.

The Ripjaws 4 series features models ranging from as low as $240 all the way up to an eye-watering $800, but today we are going to be reviewing a model which - its hard to type these words - comes in at a comparatively modest $399 USD / $429 CAD. The F4-3000C15Q-16GRR is a quad-channel 16GB (4x4GB) memory kit rated at DDR4-3000 with timings of 15-15-15-35 at 1.35V. While these timings might seem incredibly loose when compared to what we are all familiar with on the DDR3 side, it is important to realize that secondary and tertiary memory timings have arguably become an increasingly more important part of memory performance due to improvements in the memory controller. When you combine this truth with the fact that DDR4 memory kits are able to run at more aggressive secondary and tertiary timings, the overall performance disadvantage (if any) is quite minimal.

In the coming pages we will be taking a close look at this impressive new memory kit, and we are going to find out how well it overclocks and see what the effect of tighter and looser timings is on overall system performance. Come check it out!

 

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Packaging & Memory Overview

Packaging & Memory Overview

Although most consumers will never even see the packaging of the products they buy online before ordering them, a little attention to the packaging does go a long way towards creating a positive initial impression when they receive their product. As a result, let's see what G.Skill have done with this new quad-channel DDR4 memory kit.

Click on image to enlarge​

G.Skill have packaged the F4-3000C15Q-16GRR in a standard plastic clamshell with a cardboard informational insert, which is the usual packaging method for most current memory kits. Thankfully, the plastic packaging does not require a knife or scissors to open, it can be opened / pulled apart by hand, which means that it is also re-sealable. As has become the norm, G.Skill have also included a metallic-looking company sticker that can you affix to your case.

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The Ripjaws 4 features a new heatspreader design that shares most of its cues from the previous Ripjaws Z, as you would expect. This particular model comes with a red heatspreader, but there is a black version as well known as the F4-3000C15Q-16GRK. More important than the aesthetics is the fact that this is a relatively low profile heatspreader, which should help prevent the numerous clearance issues we have been experiencing over the years with certain large CPU coolers.

Click on image to enlarge​

We decided to remove the heatspreaders to get a better look at what we are dealing with. These are single-sided modules, which explains how G.Skill is also offering a 32GB DDR4-3000 kit with 8GB modules (although it's nearly impossible to find in-stock). As you can see, this memory kit uses Hynix MFR ICs, which are the best overclocking DDR4 memory chips on the market right now.

You can expect to find these (or Samsung ICs) on most memory kits, but don't think that you just buy a low-rated and overclock it to high heavens. At the moment, all these ICs are being heavily binned, so there are very few Diamonds in the Rough making their way to the lower priced kits. Oddly enough, if you look at the gold pins you will be able to spot the fact that these memory modules are slightly convex towards the middle. This is an attribute that we have see on all other DDR4 sticks, so it is clearly part of the specification.

 

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Test Setup & Methodology

Test Setup & Methodology

For this review, we are going to be testing a variety of different frequency and timing configurations while also attempting to keep the CPU and Uncore clocks are identical as possible across all of those configurations, unless otherwise noted. Aside from manually selecting frequencies, timings, and voltages every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

Intel Core i7 LGA2011-v3 Haswell-E Test Setup​

For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed.

C)To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks are applied to Windows 7 and the NVIDIA control panel:

• UAC – Disabled
• Indexing – Disabled
• Superfetch – Disabled
• System Protection/Restore – Disabled
• Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
• Remote Desktop/Assistance - Disabled
• Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
• Windows Defender – Disabled
• Screensaver – Disabled
• Power Plan – High Performance
• V-Sync – Off

D) All available Windows updates are then installed.

E) All programs are installed and then updated, followed by a defragment.

F) Benchmarks are each run three to eight times, and unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged.

Here is a full list of the applications that we utilized in our benchmarking suite:

• 3DMark Vantage Professional Edition v1.1.0
• 3DMark11 Professional Edition v1.0.132.0
• 3DMark 2013 Professional Edition v1.2.362
• AIDA64 Extreme Edition v3.00.2536 Beta
• Cinebench R11.529 64-bit
• SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP
• MaxxMEM² - PreView v2.01
• Sisoft Sandra 2014.SP3 20.28
• Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark v1.0.0.0
• wPRIME version v2.10
• X3: Terran Conflict Demo v1.0

That is about all you need to know methodology wise, so let's get to the good stuff!

 

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

For our memory overclocking tests we are usually interested in two main elements: how well the memory scales with additional voltage and how versatile it is at overclocking with different timings. However, we quickly found out that this memory kit doesn't really benefit from going above 1.40V and in fact sometimes worsened overclockability depending on timings. So we decided to simply increase the voltage from the manufacturer specified 1.35V to 1.40V, and put all our efforts on timings scalability instead.

In order to make sure that there weren't any possible CPU-related bottlenecks, the CPU Cache Voltage was set to 1.30V and the CPU System Agent Voltage set to 1.25V. We focused on four basic timing configurations (12-12-12 / 13-13-13 / 14-14-14 / 15-15-15) all with a 1T command rate for optimal performance.

With the pleasantries out of the way, let's get to the fun stuff.

As you can see above, the results from this kit were very strong across the board. Starting off with the default 15-15-15 timings, this memory kit showed a good amount of extra headroom. Not only were we almost able to hit slightly above DDR4-3100, but we were able to do so with the aggressive 1T command rate, which is much more strenuous than the 2T timing that G.Skill rates this kit for. As you will see at the very bottom of this page, if you do elect to go the 2T route this kit gets even more impressive, but at the expense of overall system performance.

When tightening the timings to 14-14-14 there is a pretty significant drop down to DDR4-2827, however, the drop is much less pronounced when tightening further to 13-13-13. This suggests to us that this kit should be capable of some interesting speeds at less 'conventional' timings like 13-14-14. Setting the timings to 12-12-12 really knocks down the RAM speed considerably, putting it squarely in DDR3 territory.

As mentioned above, we stuck with 1.40Vdimm (up from 1.35V default) because anything above that didn't really gain us any appreciable frequency headroom and in fact caused benchmarking errors more quickly and more often.

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These screenshots are just to prove that we did indeed achieve the overclocks listed, and that they were stable enough to pass a series of mainstream benchmarking and stress testing applications.

Since all of these overclocks were done with the 1T command rate, we decided to see what this high-end G.Skill kit was capable of at 2T, which is what this particular model is rated for. As you will see below, it is quite impressive.

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DDR4-3168 15-15-15-35-2T is pretty damn impressive, is a very solid amount of headroom above what the F4-3000C15Q-16GRR is rated at. Believe it or not, we actually tested each stick individually, and there is really only one module holding us back here, all the other three are capable of an even more impressive DDR4-3232 at these timings. Does this actually translate to worthwhile day-to-day performance? Well check out the following two pages to see our benchmarking results with seven different timing configurations.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we reveal the results from a number of benchmarks run with the Core i7-5960X and ASUS X99 Deluxe at default clocks, with the G.Skill memory kit's XMP profile applied, and using own our manual overclocks. This will illustrate how much performance can be achieved at various DDR4 memory speeds and timings. For a thorough comparison of the Core i7-5960X versus a number of different CPUs have a look at our Intel Haswell-E Core i7-5960X Review.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with 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. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R11.5

Cinebench R11.5 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R11.5 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition

AIDA64 uses a suite of benchmarks to determine general performance and has quickly become one of the de facto standards among end users for component comparisons. While it may include a great many tests, we used the AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark in order to tests the raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score. This memory benchmark is a classic way to measure bandwidth of a memory subsystem.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1680
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280x720
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280x1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High
Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1680x1050
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent multi-threaded game engine, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

This is the first DDR4 memory kit that we have reviewed, and what a start! To recap, the F4-3000C15Q-16GRR is a quad-channel 16GB (4x4GB) memory kit rated at DDR4-3000 with timings of 15-15-15-35 at 1.35V. While these timings might seem quite loose when compared to what we are familiar with on the DDR3 side, they are just par for the course when it comes to DDR4. Furthermore, due to a variety of factors, the less known and less seen secondary and tertiary memory timings have significantly grown in importance with DDR4, and they are generally tighter than those found on DDR3 memory kits.

The elephant in the room is obviously the price tag, but there are no cheap enthusiast-oriented DDR4 memory kits right now. Having said that, when you're spending $300 to 500 on a motherboard, $400 to $1000 on a processor, you don't really want to be stingy on the memory front. Also, you should remember that before DDR4, the rare and elusive 16GB DDR3-3000 memory kits were retailing for between $1400 to $1800! To have an equivalent clock speed at one-quarter of the price is a clear sign of improvement to us.

As our benchmarks demonstrate, the difference between DDR4-2133 and DDR4-3000 can be substantial in certain apps and games. Also, if you don't lose too much clock speed, tightening the memory timings can result in even better performance, as demonstrated by our DDR4-2827 14-14-14-1T configuration often achieving superior benchmarking numbers than the DDR3-3104 15-15-15-1T and DDR4-3168 15-15-15-2T setups.

Performance and price aside, we also appreciate this kit's low profile heatspreaders and we certainly can't complain about G.Skill's lifetime warranty. Overall then, if you are in the market for an enthusiast-oriented DDR4 memory kit, the G.Skill F4-3000C15Q-16GRR should be at the top of your list.