Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz DDR3 review (8GB)

We have reviewed memory from Kingston, G.Skill and Topower in recent weeks and today we are looking at a kit from Patriot, called the Viper Xtreme Division 2 which runs at 2,133mhz. We will test it on Intel's latest Z77 platform, courtesy of the Gigabyte Z77-UD5H motherboard. Patriot have a well earned reputation in enthusiast circles, having released a range of high quality Solid State drives and memory kits in the last year. The Viper Xtreme Series 'Division 2' Edition memory has been designed for the Intel platform and they utilise a custom designed heatspreader solution with an outer shield built around a copper core to provide improved cooling. Patriot claim that each module has 6 grams of copper at the core, paired with extruded aircraft grade aluminium which works as the outer shield. They say that the memory is built on quality pre-sorted IC's and are 'rigorously tested and validated on the Intel 6 series platform to achieve maximum performance and stability'. Phew, they aren't messing around. More importantly, they have decided to spell 'Xtreme' in a very cool way too, dropping the leading 'E'. Yes, we digress. Specifications: Extreme Performance PC3-17000 (2133MHz). Enhanced Latency (11-11-11-30). Voltage: 1.65V. XMP Ready. Equipped with an extruded aluminum shield build around a copper core to provide improved cooling. 100% Tested and Verified. RoHS Compliant. The Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz memory ships in an attractively designed cardboard box with a high resolution image of the memory on the front. A sticker top right, highlights the detailed specifications. Inside, is another, smaller plastic blister pack with the memory protected inside. There is no bundle with the memory. The memory is protected with a black heatspreader. A layer of copper can be seen and as we mentioned earlier, this is used to improve the cooling proficiency. These are 4GB sticks, for a total of 8GB in dual channel. The sticker on the memory is marked 'PXD38G2133C11K' with 2,133mhz speeds @ 11-11-11-30 timings. Not the tightest memory we have seen in recent months. Additionally, this is 1.65V rated memory. Patriot offer a lifetime warranty with the memory. Patriot are using quality HYNIX memory, marked 'H5TQ2G83BFR'. The Hynix datasheet for this memory is over here. On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. We are using the excellent Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard which we reviewed last week. The Gigabyte board set the memory up in compatibility mode, configuring the speed to 1333mhz. The memory has two XMP profiles. Profile 1 for 2,133mhz operation and Profile 2 as a fall back 1866mhz mode. We checked the timings to ensure everything was in order. It was configured correctly at 11-11-11-30. To overclock, we manually tried to select a 2,400mhz profile and loosened the timings. Sadly the system wouldn't post. We therefore opted to increase the system base clock, after selecting a 22x memory multipler for a basic 2200mhz speed. We achieved a final overclocked result of 2310mhz, from the default 2133mhz. We had to loosen the timings further (11-13-13-36) however to get stability. System validation at 2310mhz is available here. Today we are using the latest Intel Core i7 3770k processor with the Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard. Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Memory: Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz Power Supply: ADATA 1200W. Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive. Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2. Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD. Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB. Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire. Comparison memory: G.Skill TridentX 8GB 2400mhz 4GB ‘generic’ 1333mhz memory @ 9-9-9-24. Kingston HyperX Genesis 2666mhz @ 11-13-13-30 Comparison memory system: Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus V Gene Z77 Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Power Supply: ADATA 1200W. Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive. Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2. Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD. Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB. Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire. We also wanted to include some results from Topower Black Edition memory, running at 1,600mhz @ 9-9-9 timings, on the following system: CPU: Intel Core i7 2700k Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe PSU: ADATA 1200W Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise Monitor: Dell U2410 NOTE: We haven’t tested many memory kits on the P67/Z68 platform in recent months, so we felt it would be worth including results from our high end Quad Channel X79 system featuring the 3960X EE processor. Obviously this shouldn’t be used as a direct comparison, but more to highlight a wider overview of performance levels between the various Intel platforms. Comparison system: Processor: Intel i7 3960X EE @ 4.4ghz Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme Cooler: Antec H20 920 Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX590 Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung Comparison memory: Kingston HyperX 2400mhz 8GB Kingston HyperX 2,400mhz 16GB G.Skill 2400mhz 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2400mhz 16GB GSkill Ripjaws Z 2133mhz 32GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz Software: SiSoft Sandra PcMark 7 MaxxMem 2 Super Pi AIDA 64. SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software. Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting. It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc. Native ports for all major operating systems are available: Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86) Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64) Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64) Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01) Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02) All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of: SMP – Multi-Processor MC – Multi-Core SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86 IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit The memory achieved almost 27 GB/s of bandwidth in the Sandra test, which is very good for a dual channel system. It slots in behind the G.Skill trident 8GB 2,400mhz kit. PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use. The system scores 5430 points, which is an impressive result. V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today. Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results. Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs. Major new features: Slate: A node based material editor. Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU. Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik. Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor FBX file linking Save to Previous Release (2010) We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render. The Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz memory pairs well with this system, with a final time of 6 minutes and 34 seconds. 2 seconds slower than when using the G.Skill TridentX 2,400mhz. MaxxMem2 PreView is a handy, free program to rate memory performance. It can be downloaded over here. The Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133mhz scores well with this synthetic benchmark, very closely matched against the G.Skill Trident X 2,400mhz memory. The Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2,133mhz memory kit has impressed us. It is true that there is no shortage of quality memory on the market today, but we think these custom 'copper core' heatspreaders really help to make the product stand out. Performance at 2,133mhz is much as we would expect although the timings are a little looser than some competing products we have tested in the last year. It would be fair to say that this doesn't make any difference in the real world, but it is slightly noticeable with some of the synthetic test results. At the default timings, there is very little additional headroom with this memory, although we managed to overclock to 2310mhz by further loosening to 11-13-13-36 timings. In such a fast moving, competitive market much of the buying decision has to be based on the pricing. Currently this memory is difficult to find, although we found a well regarded Powerseller on ebay who has listed the memory at £40.37 although this is being imported from America. We would therefore hope that UK etailers will get stock at £50 inc vat when the memory is available. At this price, it is competitive against G.Skill and other leading performance enthusiast memory. EDIT: 23rd May - OCUK now stock the memory over here for £65.99 inc vat Pros: Good performance. Overclocks further with looser timings. Great heatspreader design. Cons: One of the most competitive sectors. Timings aren't the tightest. Kitguru says: Quality memory with fantastic headspreader design.