G.Skill Trident 6GB PC3-16000 CL9 Tri Channel Memory Kit Review

System Benchmarks

SuperPi Mod v1.5

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.


An enthusiast favourite, SuperPi excels at revealing how the processing and memory sub-systems are performing and it can demonstrate the slightest performance variances. In this case, the default DDR3-2000 memory speed is the fastest, but only by a mere 1.4 to 2.5%, and some of that can be attributed to the 50Mhz CPU core clock advantage. Memory bandwidth plays a huge factor in SuperPi 32M, but clearly the if you tighten the timings enough you can offset much of the lack of bandwidth.


PCMark Vantage x64

The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general overview of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which consists of a wide range of tests involving all the sub-systems of the computer.


Here we see that a 4% performance gain is achieved in PCMark Vantage, which is respectable since it represents an improvement in overall system performance. Although this benchmark tests all important sub-systems, it is evident that nearly all the gains are isolated to the Memories Score and CPU-intensive Communication and Productivity sections.


Cinebench R10

Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.


Cinebench is a phenomenal CPU benchmark and the Intel Core i7 absolutely dominates in this test, but as this chart indicates the memory sub-system had truly minimal impact on the results, in the sub-1% range.


x264 HD Benchmark

Tech Arp's recent development of the x264 HD Benchmark takes a 30 second HD video clip and encodes it into the x264 codec with the intention of little to no quality loss. The test is measured using the average frames per second achieved during encoding, which scales with processor speed and efficiency. The benchmark also allows the use of multi-core processors so it gives a very accurate depiction of what to expect when using encoding application on a typical full length video.


As with Cinebench, the x264 HD benchmark is highly CPU dependent, and while the DDR3-2000 setting takes the lead, the difference between the three results is a mere 2%.


Lame Front End

Unlike the DivX conversion program we just looked at, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single processor core. This will obviously limit performance but we should still achieve significant time savings going from the stock to the overclocked settings. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.


A statistical dead heat, LFE does not exhibit any performance boost from the higher memory clocks, nor variations in timings.


Photoshop CS3

For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS3 in coordination with Driver Heaven’s Photoshop Benchmark V3, which is an excellent test of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 15 different filters to a 109MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 15 results to reach the final figure.


Continuing the trend, Photoshop demonstates only a 2.5% minimal performance variation between the slowest and fastest results. The 6-7-6 configuration manages to ever so slightly surpass the 7-8-7 setting, but not by a statistically significant amount.


WinRAR 3.8.0

The last of our real-life tests will be with the highly popular & multi-threaded WinRAR 3.8.0 tool, in which we take a 1GB batch of assorted files and archive them, timing the task until completion.


Although WinRAR compression is a heavily memory bandwidth bound workload, the Core i7 processor's triple memory interface provides so much memory bandwidth that the difference between the slowest and fastest results is a minor 3%, with memory latencies not having a noteworthy difference on performance.