Testing Method & Test Setup

Performance memory is worth the extra money only when it’s used on a performance platform. These days, the name of the game is Intel Ivy Bridge, so that would be our primary testing rig.

Motherboard	Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H (BIOS F9)
CPU	Intel Core i7-3770K (ES, E0)
Graphic card	XFX 8600 GT
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Smart Tactical Tracer BLT2CP4G3D1869DT2TXRGCEU
HDD	Samsung 40 GB
PSU	Silverstone OP1000
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Our experience suggests that Prime 95 and HCI Memtest is the couple of tests feared most by unstable memory. We’ll select eight 750MB instance 100% pass of the latter as our yardstick for stability, as it is relatively quick and familiar for us way of testing things.
Even though Ivy Bridge has brought a lot more flexibility to memory overclocking in comparison with Sandy Bridge, it still has a number grey areas which you can’t reach manouvering with available memory multipliers and adjusting the BCLK between 98 and 108MHz, the values we found out to be the extremes of full stability. Because of that, we use a more flexible secondary platform, which will also be used to verify the overclocking results which we thought made little sense on the Ivy Bridge.

Motherboard	ASUS M5A99X (BIOS 0902)
CPU	AMD FX-8150
Graphic card	XFX 8600 GT
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Smart Tactical Tracer BLT2CP4G3D1869DT2TXRGCEU
HDD	Samsung 40 GB
PSU	Silverstone OP1000
OS	Windows 7, 64 bit SP1

Unfortunately, due to memory controller limitations, which regular users are also very likely to encounter, both our platforms cannot support stable memory operation at frequency in excess of 1250MHz or DDR3-2500 so no testing above that will be done.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Testing Method & Test Setup
Page 2 - Closer Look	Page 5 - Results
Page 3 - Photo Gallery	Page 6 - Conclusion

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