Summer testing of a set of RAM ADATA XPG

Summer test of a set of RAM ADATA XPG 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz
Greetings to all. Recently I bought a four-channel set of RAM ADATA XPG Z1 [AX4U3000W4G16-QGZ] 16 GB (4 GB x4) into my system. I plan to use my home computer for gaming purposes, so it was not a simple matter that I chose this amount, as well as the type of memory. Of course, for gaming purposes, to take a slow memory is to act recklessly enough. The performance of RAM affects the performance of the system in games, and to a greater extent also, its volume.
At the moment, I ordered myself a powerful video card (now I'm using the old GTX 570), and while there was nothing to do on the weekend, I decided to thoroughly "drive" the RAM and find out its overclocking potential, and at what timings it works without failures.
I note right away that the set does not shine with its budget, but the target audience, with which it will be popular, will reliably understand what they pay that kind of money for and how they will use it, because it offers very good overclocking tools and is designed for enthusiasts.
So, the technical characteristics and markings of ADATA XPG Z1:

Packaging and packaging The
kit is supplied in a transparent blister with a special cardboard insert.

On the front there are two strips, on the back there are two others. Key features are noted on the inner brochure and on the strips themselves.

Inside, there is a simple instruction on how to install RAM, and what to do with it in general))):

Of course, I would rate the kit at 5 points if there were still some branded stickers lying there. To some, this may not seem like a very important moment, but I am "Plyushkin" and such bonuses are interesting to me.
Design and layout
So, we have a set of DDR4 RAM, which differs from standard modules by the presence of proprietary golden heatsinks.

The radiators are glued to the chips with a special thermal adhesive. To be honest, I didn’t take them off and check what kind of chips there were. Although without face-to-face research, I know there are Hynix chips in there.

The radiators are made of aluminum, in terms of their height they cannot be called low-profile, but nevertheless, with installations of many cooling systems, problems should not arise. And do not forget that in many respects still depends on the layout of the motherboard.

The modules were tested on the MSI X99 GAMING 7

motherboard . Timings and overclocking
The motherboard, by default, started RAM in DDR4-2135 mode at an effective frequency of 1067 MHz (the motherboard cheats a little and overclocks the frequencies) at a voltage of 1.20 V and timings of 15-15 -15-36. And of course all the magic happens when you activate the XMP extreme settings profile.

However, if the XMP profile is loaded, the processor is automatically overclocked. To operate the memory above 2.666 MHz, a Strap frequency of 125 MHz is required. The base frequency of the processor is increased from 100 to 125 MHz. Accordingly, the frequency of my processor has increased by 300 MHz.
Therefore, I did the usual way - disabled the XMP profiles and manually adjusted the timings, voltage, and frequencies of the modules.
In addition, the motherboard offers interesting functions. The BIOS had specialized settings for specific chips of a certain brand. I don’t know for certain what these optimizations were, but these settings allowed us to squeeze out the maximum frequencies from the RAM, however, the timings too.

All the overclocking results are summarized in a simple table.
Frequency Voltage Timings
2.133 MHz 1.20 V CL 11-11-11-22
2.666 MHz 1.35 V CL 14-14-13-27
3.000 MHz 1.35 V CL 15-15-15-31
3162 MHz 1.35 V CL 16-16-16-39
3.200 MHz 1.35 V CL 18-18-18-39

Without activating a special mode on the motherboard, the modules could hardly run at 3050 MHz. With the activated mode, the modules worked quietly at frequencies up to 3200 MHz. When this threshold was exceeded, one of the planks "fell off", although the system continued to work stably (!).
Performance
testing The following set of hardware was used to test the board:
• Intel Core i7-5920K (Haswell-E)
• MB: MSI X99 Gaming 7
• Cooling system: Xilence M403
• PSU: ETG 850W
• CASE: not used
• Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 (AX4U3000W4G16-QGZ) 16 GB (4 GB x4)
• Graphic Card: Palit GeForce GTX 570 Sonic Platinum 1280 MB
• HDD: Plextor M6E M.2. 256 GB
• Monitor: ViewSonic VA2248 Series
• OS Windows 8.1


Testing tools that were used:
• AIDA64 Memory & Cache Benchmark
• WinRar Benchmark
• 3D MARK
• PCMARK
• Dota 2
• Battlefield 4
All tests were carried out in the following modes:
Frequency Voltage Timings
2.133 MHz 1.20 V CL 15-15 -15-36
2.666 MHz 1.25 V CL 14-14-14-33
3.000 MHz 1.35 V CL 15-15-15-36
3162 MHz 1.35 V CL 16-16-16-39
As seen from the table I used DDR4-2133 MHz and DDR4-3000 MHz according to the preset profiles, and for the speed of DDR4-2666 MHz, the timings and voltage were selected experimentally at a voltage of 1.35 V.








The graphs clearly show that with an increase in the frequency of modules, as well as a decrease in latency, the memory bandwidth increases. On average, each increase mode yielded a 5-6 percent increase in throughput. In general, extreme RAM settings will allow you to "pull" an additional 10-15% of performance out of the system. It will be clear and noticeable in synthetic tests.
In games - the performance gain will be noticeably noticeable when the video card is not the bottleneck (see graphs). In addition, as I mentioned above, for games, it is desirable to have 4 GB or more of RAM. Before that, I played Dota2 on a system with 2 Gb of RAM. Of course, this was not enough, and the toy periodically "lagged". After installing the kit, life became easier, periodic jerking and sagging FPS are gone. Increasing the frequency and decreasing module delays allow you to get somewhere 4-7% increase in Dota2, and remove all lags.
Conclusions
What we liked about ADATA XPG 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz:
• high performance;
• aesthetically pleasing cooling radiators;
• good overclocking potential;
What does not suit:
• an expensive platform on which this memory can be used.