Test system setup

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (OC @ 3.85GHz, 480MHz FSB)
• Zerotherm BTF90 cooler
• Motherboard: Asus P5K3-Deluxe Wi-Fi
• HDD: Samsung 160JJ SATA-II
• VGA: Nvidia Geforce 7950GT
• PSU: OCZ ModXstream 780W

Software used:
Sisoft Sandra 2007.5.11.35
Everest Ultimate Edition
PcMark 2005
F.E.A.R.

As no system will currently support 1600MHz DDR-3 RAM natively, our system had to be severely overclocked in order to be up to the task. An 80% overclock brought our Allendale E6400 to 3.85GHz and the use of the 5:3 CPU to RAM divider got the RAM running at 1600MHz. Timings are manually set in the BIOS. Intel Speedstep technology is disabled. 

In our attempt to overclock the modules further, we found out that the timings had to be loosened up to 9-8-8 in order to reach 1740MHz even if we applied high voltages; not much further than their rated speed. The speed gain from the extra 140MHz was small due to the relaxed timings. However, after testing the modules further we discovered another interesting fact; when voltages in excess of 2.0V were applied they could not only work at much tighter timings but we could also enable the 1T command, effectively increasing the performance of the RAM by a large percentage. These are the first DDR-3 modules which we could enable the 1T command with. The kit we received worked up to 1680MHz with 6-5-5 timings and the 1T command enabled without showing significant stability problems, but we ran all benchmarks at 1600MHz with the Vdimm set at 2.1V in order to keep the results comparable and the system fully stable.