Crucial Pro Series 6400MT/s Overclocking Memory Review

As with all of our reviews, we pit the default speed system against the overclocked one in a head-to-head byte match.  The only difference is that with our memory reviews we leave the base system (CPU, Chipset etc..) at default speeds so that the only thing we are changing is the memory module.  You can see this with the Sandra CPU Tests and at that point the only performance advantage is from increased memory performance. 

There are different approaches to overclocking memory and while you may not get an extra 25FPS in your games the increased bandwidth and lower latencies can often unlock the potential for better system efficiencies.

The effective overclock for these tests was 6800MT/s(Mhz) and to attain these clocks the XMP profile remained enabled with memory frequency being raised to 6800Mhz.  Our motherboard bios automatically lowered the timings and the voltage and remained at 1.35v.

Memory overclocking is a pretty arduous task of trial and error.  As with most overclocking there is a balance that we want to maintain including the relationship between temperature, voltage and frequency.  Given that your system memory also drives CPU performance it is not uncommon to see performance go down with an overclock that has been pushed too far or has a mismatched setting.

What I find amazing is how easy these modules were to overclock when compared to previous editions of the Crucial Pro Series.  With these sticks I was able to simply raise the memory clock and just go.  It just goes to show that the engineers tuning these memory modules are pretty smart in how they test and tune. Or, it might be speaking to improvements in the Micron DDR5 DRAM mfg process.