TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Thanks to XMP (2.0/3.0) profiles the only thing one needs to do in order to run this RAM kit at its advertised frequency, timings and voltages is to choose/enable it from within the BIOS and reboot. That being said if you're into overclocking you may not wish to use the main XMP profile but instead to choose your very own frequency, timings and voltages to achieve even higher performance numbers and that's exactly what we'll also be doing during our DDR4 tests. To be more specific aside testing each kit with its XMP profile we will also be upping the voltages (up to 1.4V max – even though most kits can function at higher voltages I don’t recommend doing so / RAM modules that use 1.4V/1.45V/1.5V will be tested up to 1.45V/1.5V/1.55V respectively) and frequencies (200MHZ increments) until i find the maximum achievable stable frequency. I also thought about upping voltages and reducing timings instead of increasing the frequency of the modules as high as it can go (always stable and without using 0.5-1V over stock) but the end results are pretty much identical.

   As for the how I'll be testing each DDR4/DDR5 Quad/Dual-Kit to arrive in the lab well there aren't that many benchmark programs that only test RAM (or at least RAM and CPU without anything else coming into play) but I’ve got most of them and so you will be seeing results from following benchmarking programs****, AIDA64 Engineer Edition, Cinebench Release 20, MaxMemm2, Passmark Performance Test (v9 for DDR4 and v10 for DDR5 tests), Sisoftware Sandra Titanium and WPrime v1.55. All tests are performed on a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation (complete with all updates until the day of this review) and are repeated a total of 6 times after which the average numbers get recorded into the charts.

* In addition to Quad-Channel tests since March 2020 I’ll also be using the brand new I9-9900K+Z390 DARK test rig (check above) for Dual-Channel RAM tests.
** Since May 2020 three game benchmarks (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, GEARS 5 and Metro Exodus tested on the X299 system at 1080p resolution and with the ASUS ROG RTX2060 OC set at Gaming Mode) have also been added in the charts.
*** In September 2021 i replaced the Intel I9-9900K+Z390 DARK test rig for a brand new Intel I9-11900K+Z590 DARK one (you can access all the Z390 DARK based tests here).
**** For DDR5 tests I’m using the Intel Core I9-12900K (E-Cores Off / RING 4.9GHz) and in order to showcase potential gains between stock and overclocked clocks/frequencies I’ll also be using Forza Horizon 5 (1080p/Extreme Graphics).