Commonly I don't pay much attending to due east-mails that hitting my inbox from manufacturers challenge that a certain motherboard can overclock a Skylake Core i7 processor the highest, or that they accept claimed the 3DMark tape. They are in my mind boring marketing tactics that mean little to nothing to the consumer.

Last month I received one such electronic mail from Asrock that yet caught my attending. It claimed their Z170M OC Formula was the merely motherboard to support Thou.Skill's Trident Z DDR4-4333 modules. Initially I thought, how useful is that? Are there even any benefits from running DDR4 memory on the LGA1151 platform that loftier?

For the most role nosotros test using DDR4-3000, as it occasionally shows some benefits over the more typical 2400 and 2666 speeds. Going to 4000 MT/due south (2000MHz) and beyond is a massive increase in frequency (and price) and I struggled to imagine where this would be useful, particularly when gaming. Then once again, curiosity had gotten the better of me...

So I asked Asrock to kindly send along 1 of their Z170M OC Formula motherboards. Disappointingly, 1000.Skill didn't take any DDR4-4333 retentiveness available and a calendar month after nosotros are yet to see whatsoever go on sale, then this news study is appearing more and more like a marketing exercise.

However, One thousand.Skill did come up back and say they could provide an 8GB kit of their DDR4-4000 memory which is bachelor for buy. It isn't the tape setting DDR4-4333 retentivity, but at 4000 MT/s information technology doesn't fall far short and will certainly give us a articulate indication of whether or not this kind of loftier frequency memory holds whatsoever merit.

Currently at that place are a few DDR4-4000 retentiveness kits available from the likes of G.Skill, Corsair and GeIL. Of those Thousand.Skill'southward TridentZ modules appear to exist capable of the best timings at nineteen-21-21-41 vs. 19-23-23-45 from Corsair, while the GeIL kits are even slacker at 19-25-25-45.

For testing we'll be using a few select applications and games comparing the Core i7-6700K at various memory speeds ranging from 2133 MT/s up to 4000 MT/southward. Helping to maximize gaming performance volition be a pair of GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics cards, if they aren't able to exploit the potential of DDR4-4000 we fear nothing will be able to. With that said, permit'due south go downwards to business.

Exam Organization Specs

  • Intel Core i7-6700 Skylake @ 4.50GHz
  • Asrock Z170M OC Formula
  • G.Skill TridentZ 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4-4000
  • 2x GeForce GTX 980 Ti SLI
  • Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB
  • Silverstone Strider Series ST1000-G Evolution 1000w
  • Windows ten Pro 64-bit

Retention Bandwidth Benchmark

Starting at DDR4-2133 we see a throughput of just 20.4GB/s which isn't bad but less than what nosotros were seeing from the Haswell processors out of the box. Increasing the retention frequency to 2400 MT/south boosted the retention bandwidth by 12% to 22.9GB/s which is typically what we were first seeing from the Haswell processors.

Going from 2400 MT/south to 3000 MT/s , the speed which nosotros regularly test at, boosted the memory bandwidth past another 20% to 27.4GB/s. Surprisingly taking the adjacent step to 3600 MT/south boosted operation significantly yet once more, this fourth dimension by some other xx% as we striking 33GB/s. Final terminate at DDR4-4000 saw the retentivity bandwidth attain 35.5GB/s making it 8% faster than the 3600 MT/s configuration. While theoretical, the first criterion shows some promise, shall nosotros get real-world?