Crucial Ballistix Tactical LP DDR3 1600MHz 16GB Memory Kit Review

With the XMP profile set and Windows booted, CPU-Z is the first port of call to check that again everything is as it should be with a total capacity of 16GB and a CAS# latency of 8.

Out of the box, the LP kit has a fairly modest level of performance and over the 1866MHz 8GB Tactical kit that we looked at previously we find bandwidth and latency to be only a little lower.

For a 16GB dual-channel kit we find some good results, with a read speed of 18466MB/s, write of 17880MB/s and copy of 20262MB/s at a latency of 42ns.

Next job is to give the kit a little taste of overclocking keeping the timings at their stock speeds to see what the kit is able to do. With the processor upped to 4.5GHz to open up the memory controller a little more, the memory dividers were our first port of call. Back in the BIOS, we noted that this kit offered up a few more dividers to what we would normally see with extra speeds to be found between 1600Mz, 1866Mz 2133MHz and so on, giving us a little more flexibility and overclocking potential.

Like the Tactical kit before, we quickly found the kit gaining speed and with the memory easily running under the 1866 divider and failing at 2000MHz, we started to raise the BCLK until things topped out at 1884Mz and a BCLK of only 100.9Mz.

Benching the kit again in AIDA64, there were big gains to be had all round with a good increase in bandwidth and a reduction in latency. Read speeds went up by 3594MB/s to 22060MB/s, write by 4822MB/s to 22702MB/s and copy by 3877MB/s to 24139MB/s. Latency dropped by 6.5ns to 35.5ns.

Given the percentage gains we found from the other kit, we knew there was still some to give here as well and allowing the motherboard to slacken the timing automatically will allow the kit to run that bit faster.

Going up again through the dividers, 2000MHz and 2133MHz were quickly obtained, but anything more resulted in a failed boot. Raising the BCLK to push the kit just a past the 2133MHz mark similarly resulted in a no boot scenario, however to get a speed of 2133MHz at 11-13-13-35-2T at a voltage of 1.5v  for a low profile kit like this is very impressive, a 30% gain in fact.

Going back to AIDA to make sure the clock was stable for one and to see how the performance matches up, we find again that the bandwidth obtained was up on before, although not by the same vast amounts. The kits latency did raise a little, but what we were left with was a read speed of 22539MB/s, write of 22918MB/s and copy of 25678MB/s at 36.5ns.