Patriot Viper Elite 8GB DDR4-2800 CL16 Memory Kit Review

Performance

Performance has been tested on a popular platform which includes Intel Core i7 6700K processor and ASUS Maximus VIII Hero motherboard.

Memory kits in comparison were tested on XMP profiles. Processor frequency in all tests is 4.2GHz, set manually with disabled power saving options.

AIDA64 Memory and Cache Benchmark

AIDA64 Memory and Cache Benchmark is probably the best test to check memory bandwidth in multithreading environment. Every new computer is working on a multi threads and load balance is a standard feature in modern operating systems so AIDA64 seems good tool to measure raw memory performance.

Intel Skylake platform likes higher memory bandwidth which is highly related to memory frequency. As we see, higher memory clock is affecting maximum bandwidth. Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-2800 performance is still good considering quite relaxed timings and lower frequency than most of the competition. We wish to see higher numbers but pure bandwidth is not always the most important so let’s check how other benchmarks look like.

HyperPi 32M

HyperPi is performing mainly processor calculations but it also reacts good on memory performance so it’s good for memory performance comparison.

Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-2800 memory kit isn’t really fast in HyperPi. Tighter memory timings would help a lot in this test while 16-18-18 main timings nowadays offer only standard performance.

Let’s check how the Viper Elite presents in more real-life work.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 is showing performance in rendering. Even though on the graph there is visible difference then when we take a look at the scores then we see that barely anything is changing. Rendering will clearly take advantage of higher memory capacity rather than speed as Intel Skylake platform has already fast memory controller. Patriot Viper Elite memory performs quite good comparing to more expensive memory kits.

3DMark 2013

In tests based on 3D graphics like 3DMark we can see barely any difference between memory kits. The main difference is in physics calculations what is only part of the benchmark. It’s still not affecting general score much as we can see on the graph.

It’s good to have fast memory kit but in case of games it’s not always worth to pay premium for the highest series. Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-2800 memory provides good performance which will be satisfying for gamers.

PCMark 8

In PCMark 8, the same as in 3DMark, we can barely see any difference between memory performance. It simply proves that memory speed is good enough for popular applications and they can’t take much more advantage. Totally different situation would be on some server applications but tested memory kits are designed for home use.

Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-2800 memory kit offers good performance, even though we wouldn’t expect that looking at the specification.

If you still expect higher performance then there are available higher frequency Patriot Viper Elite memory kits or you can try your luck in overclocking. Since I mentioned overclocking then let’s move forward to the next part of this review which will show overclocking potential of Patriot Viper Elite DDR4-2800 memory.

Overclocking

Overclocking is never guaranteed so the presented results may vary from results on other memory kits. I am not recommending overclocking if you do not know what are you doing. High voltages may damage hardware and it will not be covered by warranty.

Memory kit which we had a chance to test is overclocking pretty good. As we remeber from the specification table, XMP settings are DDR4-2800 CL16-18-18 while we were able to set fully stable DDR4-3200 16-16-16 1.33V on MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC motherboard.

Additionally setting of DDR4-3000 15-15-15 1.35V is also possible.

Results from quick stability test at DDR4-3200 setting are below. I was performing additional tests in rendering and 3D applications where all was also stable.

Overall I think that overclocking potential is good. With so good overclocking potential it’s actually strange that XMP profile has so relaxed settings. As we could see, in most applications it won’t matter but if we have to pick one of the memory kits from the online store where we can’t really check the performance then it may affect our decision.