Article Review: G.Skill Ares 2133CL 9 - 8GB

Introduction and Specifications

I recently managed to snag one of G.Skill's latest kits and I thought I must share some of my results with you guys. This is one amazing piece of kit and I am sure you guys will like the results.

"G. SKILL"was established in 1989 by enthusiasts and is one of the leading memory module manufacturers. The company is based out of Taipei, Taiwan.
Over the last few years, G.Skill have built an excellent reputation by meeting market demand and fostering business competitiveness both locally and internationally with their dedications to provide competitive prices, quality, customer oriented service and diversity of products.

I still remember hunting around for a kit that would do 2000 Mhz on a 1090T about a year and a half ago. And the only kit that would do it, with sane voltages was a kit of G.Skill Flares, that I managed to buy off someone who was done with benching them on an AMD Thuban rig. None of the other manufacturers were really bothered with AMD kits at that time and this particular kit came as a God send to many of us AMD enthusiasts. Keep in mind that AMD Thuban's did not have a very strong memory controller and lagged far behind their Intel counterparts and getting to 2000 Mhz without cold was a task in itself.

Now cut to the present day and what we have is a processor with an extremely strong IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) from AMD, The Bulldozer based Zambezi CPU. Admittedly, Bulldozer has not set the performance charts on fire and has actually lost a bit of IPC to the previous generation Thuban, but its still a good CPU for multitasking, but only if you are prepared to forget about its ghastly power consumption figures. I have been playing around with the IMC for the most part since I got the CPU a few days ago and I must say that I am quite happy with the performance till date. Keep in mind that a G.Skill kit, (Ripjaws-Z, which we will be testing soon as well) was recently used to break the RAM speed record on an AMD Llano setup.

Getting back to the review at hand, G.Skill launched a Dual and Quad Channel low profile kit sometime last month and we are the first guys in India to take an official look at this new piece of kit. The Ares as you will see in the pages that follow is a great piece of kit and has some extremely good overclocking abilities. Lets take a quick look at the specifications first:

Specifications

Model Number	F3-2133C9D-8GAB
Series	ARES
System	DESKTOP
System Type	DDR3
Main Board	INTEL
M/B Chipset	P67 / Z68
Capacity	8GB (4GBx2)
Multi-Channel Kit	Dual Channel kit
Tested Speed	DDR3-2133 MHz (PC3-17000)
Tested Latency	9-11-10 2N
Tested Voltage	1.65V
Registered/Unbuffered	Unbuffered
Error Checking	Non-ECC
Type	240-pin DIMM
SPD Speed	1600 MHz
SPD Voltage	1.5V
Warranty	Lifetime
Fan lncluded	No
Features	Intel XMP (Extreme Momery Profile)Ready

The Ares kit is also available all the way from 1333 Mhz to 2133 Mhz, with the kit that we are reviewing being the top of the line 2133 kit with CL 9 timings. This kit (as we can see from the Intel XMP timings) is aimed towards the Sandybridge and the Sandybridge E crowd and so I thought it would be fun to see what they are capable of on an AMD system.