Maximus Extreme - Results/Info/Bios

[3oh6]

3oh6 did those Corsair tests pass Memtest at the voltage and settings specified? Also what were your bios and real settings for 2.0? I have not measured the real voltage but it appears that the bios settings overvolt the ram a good bit.

You may have already specified that some where in your review but I didnt see it...

no problem, i think it is in there but yes, my Maximus Extreme over-volts 0.10v at every voltage selection so 1.90v = 2.00v. the good thing is that Everest picks up the actual voltage so the voltage shown in all the screenshots is the actual voltage. i measured all the caps around the DIMM slots and they all scale with what the BIOS/Everest report for actual voltage.

as for Memtest, if you are talking about Memtest 86+, i generally just use it to make sure i am not going to bork my Windows install when i am finding my starting point for a particular timing set at the lowest voltage. i only run a couple loops of test #5 and if it doesn't error it is usually safe to go into Windows. after that though, i play by ear and don't use Memtest 86+ anymore because it is rather useless for testing stability in windows. dual 32M is a lot tougher a stability test than Memtest 86+. if you really want, i could test some of the different settings in Memtest 86+ to make sure it isn't spitting out false errors that are totally stable in Windows...don't rule that out either.

Also I noticed you didn't go very high in the voltage testing with the Crucials only 1.95 as appossed to 2.15 with the dominators and the Crucials kept up at the same voltage.
Were you concerned that they would not be able to handle the voltage?

if you read through the Crucial OC report, i mention that the P5K3-Dlx overvolts from the BIOS setting 0.06v so in reality, 1.95v was really 2.01 and at the same voltage, the Dominators walk away from the Ballistix.

the reason i held back on voltage was because at the time of that report, and even now, no one really knows what D9GTR/GTS can take for voltage. with the Ballistix history of not handling voltage all that well, i had no ambition to kill them just yet. plus, they were my only decent kit of DDR3 back then as well. it is a different story now so look for some updated clocks on the Maximus Extreme with the Ballistix and higher voltages.

I suppose I am just trying to make myself feel better since I purchased 4 GB of the Crucials

just keep in mind that the Ballistix only have one bin, the DDR3-1600 8-8-8 kit at 1.8v. that is very very conservative specs. with having only one bin, there is going to be more variation in their kits than you will find in the Domintaor DDR3-1800 7-7-7 kit at 2.0v because all of the Dominators are binned for that high of a frequency at those timings.

not all D9GTR will do that but all on the Dominators will because that is what they are binned for. you can't get a bad kit of those Dominators because if you do, they don't run spec, and you RMA. with the Ballistix, their spec is a lot lower so there is a possibility of getting only a good kit instead of a great kit. there is also the possibility of getting a killer kit.

you won't have the chance of getting a killer kit in say the DDR3-1600 7-7-7 kits of Corsair because if they were killer, they would have been DDR3-1800 Dominators...does that make sense?