Patriot Viper Xtreme DDR3-1600 Tri-Channel 6Gb Kit Review

XMP and Overclocking

Bobnova’s word on XMP profiles:

XMP profiles can make setting up your new ram quick and painless, but it is a very good idea to go back into the bios after enabling them to check a few main voltage levels. You see an XMP profile is more then just ram settings, some profiles also overclock the CPU and raise voltages on the CPU as well as the RAM.

So, after enabling XMP it’s a good idea to save, exit, reboot, and then re-enter the bios to make sure that the vtt(also known as qpi-dram) voltage is somewhere safe (~1.35 or less on 1366 quad cores) and that the cpu isn’t overclocked further then you like. The manufacturers have to specify more voltage to ensure that all cpus can run the ram, and if it’s fast stuff it may take a lot of voltage, enough to damage the CPU over time.

There are not very many XMP profiles with dangerous voltages in them, generally you only get into trouble if you’re using ram made for a different platform, such as using a kit made for P55 on X58, P55 is much more forgiving of vtt voltage then X58 is.

We’ll check out the XMP profile on this Patriot ram and see how it looks, given it’s 1600 rated speed I think it’ll probably be fine.

Overclocking

Overclocking ram can take two forms, there is the more classic overclocking of raising the frequency, and there is the more ram specific version of lowering the timings.

This kit of ram isn’t very inclined to do either one, frequency wise 1600 is about it, and at that speed the timings could only be lowered from 8-9-8 2t to 8-8-7 1t. Enough to make a decent difference in benchmarks, but probably not worth it for daily use in my opinion.

There is, however, one timing that I would change. That is the “Command Rate”, from 2T (sometimes called 2N) in the XMP profile to 1T/1N, it makes enough of a difference that it might be noticeable in daily use. Seeing it in the XMP profile is disappointing, but I expect that it is there for backwards compatibility.

Now I have enabled the XMP profile, and we’ll check it out!

BIOS Screenshot
Showing XMP settings

My camera and monitor don’t like each other, but the Rampage II Extreme bios has a nice feature in that it lists the important parts of the profile all in one line.

You can see the speed (1600mhz), the four main timings (8-9-8-24), the command rate (2N), and then the memory voltage and “Uncore” voltage. The uncore (also called the IMC, memory controller, or qpi/dram bus) voltage is important, set too low the memory controller can’t keep up with the ram, set to high the cpu fries. 1.35 is a good bit more then most memory controllers will require to run 1600mhz ram, but it is well below the dangerous levels I’ve seen from time to time in XMP profiles.

CPU-Z Information