Legit Reviews

When I was in San Francisco I met with Super Talent and they gave me their highest rated DDR3 memory kit that I requested from them a couple weeks ago. The model number is W1866UX2G8 and the kit is a pair of 1GB modules (2GB total) at a speed rating of 1866MHz with 8-8-8-24 timings at 1.9Volts.

I put the modules on the test system and it's off to a rough start...

It's all being done on the ASUS P5K3, which is what Super Talents white paper says they also use for testing. The first thing I do with every memory kit I do is run it on the RST Pro, which is a card that tests for memory stability. It is tougher than any software based test like MemTest. Let's just say off to a rough start... ERRORS ERRORS ERRORS...

10 Minutes of RST Pro Testing

* 1.90V -> 122 Errors
* 2.00V -> 11 Errors
* 2.05V -> 2 Errors
* 2.10V -> 12565 Errors

Well at 1.90V the memory kit was throwing errors... Logically, I increased the voltage and the errors decreased... At 2.05V I was getting just a couple errors 10 minutes into the 1+ hour test loop and I thought increasing it to 2.10V would fix the errors.... Boy was I wrong... 2.10V made the modules throw errors like crazy at 1866MHz 8-8-8-24 2T...

Just to make sure my system was okay I inserted the Corsair DOMINATOR 1800MHZ C7 kit and the OCZ Platinum 1600MHz C7 memory kit and both passed at the same settings.... all i did was remove the Super Talent modules and install the others...

Just wanted to give our readers a heads up for the time being... Super Talent was contacted and sent these pictures this morning, so they are of course in the know and for the time being they are being sat aside to see if Super Talent wants to replace them or what.

You get all the good toys.

dicecca112 wrote:You get all the good toys.

memory that throws errors?

lol, well if it didn't throw errors it would be a good toy.

And if Super Talent have any sense, you'll get a new kit that will be error free.

Dan

I did just hear back from Super Talent and found out some interesting stuff...

We test the 1866 kits on Asus P5K3 Deluxe with Mem86 for about 30 minutes. We don’t currently use RST Pro in our DDR3 production testing.

Seems Super Talent doesn't do any other testing than some Mem86, which doesn't catch as many errors as the RST Pro card does...

Free Mem86 < $700 RST PRO3

Do you think it would be worth testing the modules with an extended run of memtest to see if it does catch any errors?

I know you have already proved them bad, but would be interesting to see if it did actually just slip through QC.

Dan

Apoptosis wrote:

dicecca112 wrote:You get all the good toys.

memory that throws errors?

No uber expensive memory

Isn't it really easy to pass a 30 minutes Memtest run?

Memtest, probably.

RSTpro testing, not so much.

Dan

Apoptosis wrote:I did just hear back from Super Talent and found out some interesting stuff...

We test the 1866 kits on Asus P5K3 Deluxe with Mem86 for about 30 minutes. We don’t currently use RST Pro in our DDR3 production testing.

Seems Super Talent doesn't do any other testing than some Mem86, which doesn't catch as many errors as the RST Pro card does...

Free Mem86 < $700 RST PRO3

did you ask them for specific sub timings and voltages they used to test these modules ? black dimm slots are best for P5K3 Deluxe ;)

yup and they told me 1.9V and indeed I know about the black dimm slots... I told Corsair and even Fugger about them before the board was public back before computex! I remember telling Fugger at the abit booth about the black DIMM slots and he was unaware of them yet. Corsair now even has use the black slots in their reviewers guide ;)

They told me to send the modules back and that they will send out newer ProjectX modules.

Looks like some Micron DDR3 just don't like to scale with vdimm voltage and like a certain sweet spot. Would be interesting to know the subtimings Super Talent used to validate this DDR3-1866 kit with

I noticed some DDR3 modules when on Asus P35 DDR3 boards if their sub timings are set to AUTO and you boot into windows and check out the set sub timings in memset, some values such as tRFC are set so much looser than the loosest tRFC value available in bios i.e. bios tRFC loosest = 72, some modules auto tRFC set 74 and above.

Tight tRFC requires more vdimm. So if they're only validating with AUTO tRFC and 30min memtest86 then I can see why there's a discrepancy between rated 1.9v vdimm and the reality of needing more vdimm even for rated speeds for windows stability.

Never used a RST Pro device before so was wondering, for RST Pro Testing, how long does it take to do a properly run to test a 2x1GB kit versus 4x1GB config ?? How much closer in terms of memory frequency for windows stability is a RST Pro passed test versus Memtest86 passed ?

thanks

Hello Apoptosis,

Just wanted to give you an update ( in case you didn't notice my post on XtremeSystems ):

BenchZowner wrote:Got another P5K3 Deluxe some days ago, just tried the sticks on this one, and they seem to be running fully stable at DDR3-1868 8-8-8-24 1T @ 1.8V

Gotta test them more thoroughly, later on...this is getting weird...the rest DDR3 kits that I've got there work fine on the first P5K3 Deluxe, and reach very similar ( almost the same ) frequencies on both P5K3 Deluxe's