Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Review

System Overview, Overclocking & Testing Procedures
Since this memory is optimized for P67 system we are going to install it into our new P67 system.  It is comprised of the following components…

Intel Core i5-2500K Processor
MSI P67A-GD55 Motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB Video Card
Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W power supply
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6GB/s hard drive
ASUS Blu-ray drive
Thermaltake FRIO CPU Cooler
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Case

Installing the modules is very easy, just press them right in.  Since the memory slots are so close to the CPU socket on this motherboard I installed the memory in slots 2 and 4.

Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit

Depending on your motherboard setup it will read the memory as DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600.  So you will need to go in to your BIOS and get it up to speed.  This is easily done since the memory supports XMP profiles.  So all you have to do is enable the XMP profile and you a good to go.  This memory runs at 1866MHz with timings of 9-11-9-27 at 1.65V.  You might also need to adjust the voltage in your BIOS.

Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit

Overclocking memory on the P67 platform is a bit tricky.  Now to overclock the memory independently of the CPU you could just adjust the DRAM Frequency, but the next option up brings the memory to 2133MHz, which caused our system to not boot at all.  So we will be overclocking the memory along with the CPU by adjusting the CPU Base Frequency.  So for this kit I turned off XMP, made the DRAM Ratio 7, and set the DRAM Timing Mode to link.  Then I went in and set the timings myself to 9-11-9-27.  This is basically what the XMP profile does for you.

So from there I went ahead and adjusted the CPU Base Frequency, it is set at 10000 by default.  I started at 10100 and went up by increments of 100.  The highest I was able to get with a stable system was 10500, which set the memory at 1957MHz.  This is only a 91MHz overclock, which is not that much, but keep in mind 1866MHz memory is normally 1600MHz memory that is overclocked as it is.  Also you are limited by the P67 system itself.

Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 DDR3-1866 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit

For memory testing we have a battery of benchmarks and tests we use.  I have listed them below.

AIDA64 (download)
– Cache & Memory Benchmark
Sisoftware Sandra 2011 (download)
– Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
– Memory Latency Benchmark
– Cache & Memory Benchmark

We will be testing the memory at its advertised speed of 1866MHz and then again at our maximum overclock of 1967MHz.

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