Testing Method & Test Setup

To test the overclocking capabilities of the memory we are going to use Intel’s recently released Haswell platform. As memory overclocks are known to vary between different motherboards, we are going to perform the tests using two different platforms to be sure that our numbers are reliable.

Motherboard	ASUS Maximus VI Gene (BIOS 0607) Gigabyte Z87X-OC (BIOS F4)
CPU	Intel Core i7-4770K ES @ 4.0 GHz
Graphic card	ASUS GTX 580
Memory	Corsair Vengeance Pro CMY8GX3M2A2133C11
SSD	Samsung PM840 Pro
PSU	Seasonic Platinum 660 Watts
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Even though Haswell is very flexible on the memory frequency one can set, very few people actually do base clock (BCLK) overclocking on their daily setups. Therefore, instead of our previous procedure of fixing the voltage and raising the frequency in 10MHz steps we are now going to fix the frequency and minimize the voltage in 0.01V steps.
As usual, our stability method of choice is HCI Memtest. Since we are dealing with a 8GB kit, we use eight 800MB instances and call things stable if we see all of them to go past 100% without showing a single error.
Not to get things too complicated, we only set the primary timings, command rate (1T) and the memory voltage by hand while the rest of the settings is left for the motherboard and SPD to agree on.

Results

As typical for most of the memory these days, raising the voltage only affects the CAS latency by allowing to run potentially lower values while the other primary timings remain unaffected with lowest stable values only depending on the frequency.
As usual with the Samsung high-density memory, stability at frequencies above 1250MHz is non-existent; then again, there is a good reason why high-density memory rated DDR3-2600+ costs as much as it currently does.
Overall, the results are very impressive taking into account how low of a specification this memory kit has. For something with CL11 written on it ability to run CL8 at rated speeds is nothing to be shy of, even if it takes 1.77V to achieve. For those not comfortable with running such voltages for daily use, there are always CL9 and CL10 options both of which can be scale up all the way to DDR3-2400.

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Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Closer Look

Page 3 - Photo Gallery

Page 4 - Results

Page 5 - Conclusion

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