Kingston Launches Low-Latency DDR3

Gaming

Three DX9-era games representing different gaming engines were used to test the performance of Kingston DDR3-1375 in real world gaming. There are more recent gaming titles available, but they are also DX9. We will update games in the memory test suite as soon as a selection of DX10 games with reliable benchmarks are available. At that time the memory test OS will also be moved to Vista.

The Far Cry - River demo was run for three loops and results in fps were averaged over the three runs.

Far Cry- HOC River - 2.66GHz Frames Per Second - Higher is Better
Memory	800	1066	1333	1520 (380x7)
Kingston DDR3-1333 KHX11000D3LLK2	103.77 5-4-3-10 1.75V	106.11 6-5-5-12 1.7V	106.91 7-7-6-15 1.7V	107.46 8-8-8-22 1.8V
Corsair DDR3-1066 CM3X1024-1066C7	103.39 6-6-6-15 1.5V	105.87 7-7-7-20 1.5V	106.70 9-9-9-25 1.5V	-
DDR2 - P35 Corsair Dominator	106.30 3-3-3-9 2.25V	108.00 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-
DDR2 - P965 (10x266) Corsair Dominator	101.26 3-3-3-9 2.25V	103.04 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-

Far Cry performs best with fast DDR2 memory on the P35 chipset, much as we expected. However, the performance of DDR3 on the P35 is much closer to DDR2 on the Asus P5K with the low latency Kingston DDR3. It is also important to note that both DDR3 and DDR2, even in slow DDR3 latencies, are faster than the fastest DDR2 on the P965.

DDR3-1333 reaches speeds almost the same as DDR2-1066 at 4-4-3 timings on the P35. Speeds above 1333 chart new performance territory for DDR3.

Quake 4 - id Demo - 2.66GHz Frames Per Second - Higher is Better
Memory	800	1066	1333	1520 (380x7)
Kingston DDR3-1333 KHX11000D3LLK2	111.2 5-4-3-10 1.75V	114.7 6-5-5-12 1.7V	115.5 7-7-6-15 1.7V	116.0 8-8-8-20 1.8V
Corsair DDR3-1066 CM3X1024-1066C7	107.9 6-6-6-15 1.5V	111.8 7-7-7-20 1.5V	113.2 9-9-9-25 1.5V	-
DDR2 - P35 Corsair Dominator	112.5 3-3-3-9 2.25V	115.7 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-
DDR2 - P965 (10x266) Corsair Dominator	106.00 3-3-3-9 2.25V	109.7 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-

Quake 4 and the underlying engine have always proved to be very sensitive to improvements in memory bandwidth. This is amply demonstrated in these memory tests. Again in all cases DDR2 and DDR3 are faster on P35 than the fastest DDR2 on P965. The pattern is the same as in Far Cry but the differences are magnified in Q4. One interesting result is that the low-latency Kingston is now within 1 frame of DDR2 3-3-3 on P35 at both the overlap speeds of 800 and 1066. Kingston DDR3-1333 performance is at about the same speed at DDR2 4-4-3 at 1066 on the same P35 chipset. Speeds higher than 1333 again chart new performance territory.

Half Life 2 - Lost Coast - 2.66GHz Frames Per Second - Higher is Better
Memory	800	1066	1333	1520 (380x7)
Kingston DDR3-1333 KHX11000D3LLK2	108.0 5-4-3-10 1.75V	109.1 6-5-5-12 1.7V	109.5 7-7-6-15 1.7V	109.5 8-8-8-22 1.8V
Corsair DDR3-1066 CM3X1024-1066C7	107.0 6-6-6-15 1.5V	108.4 7-7-7-20 1.5V	108.7 9-9-9-25 1.5V	-
DDR2 - P35 Corsair Dominator	108.5 3-3-3-9 2.25V	109.5 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-
DDR2 - P965 (10x266) Corsair Dominator	103.9 3-3-3-9 2.25V	104.9 4-4-3-11 2.3V	-	-

We include Half-Life 2: Lost Coast as a representative of games that are less sensitive to improvements in memory bandwidth. Lost Coast is played through the Steam engine, where there is the constant worry, for a reviewer, that each new update of Steam will break your test benchmarks. Though the differences are not as dramatic, the pattern is exactly the same as the other two games. All P35 results are faster than the same fast DDR2 results on the P965. DDR2-800 3-3-3 and DDR2-1066 4-4-3 are the fastest in the overlap speeds on the P35 motherboard.

Low latency Kingston DDR3 is all but identical in results to fast DDR2 at both overlap speeds, showing the impact of lowered latency on DDR3 performance. 1333 and above results chart new performance territory, and the Low latency Kingston performance in these higher speeds certainly validates DDR3 as the performance memory for the future.