Corsair 2GB DOMINATOR DDR3 2133MHz Memory Kit

Super Pi and Final Thoughts

Super PI Mod v1.4:

Super PI is a program a lot of enthusiasts use to benchmark overall system performance, as the program is capable of calculating pi up to 33.55 million digits on a timer. Many overclockers and enthusiasts are in a battle to get the lowest 1M Super Pi time possible.

Benchmark Results: Super Pi showed a performance improvement when running the calculation of pi beyond four million places.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions:

The Corsair TW3X2G2133C9DF memory kit is a very impressive memory kit that was found to be 100% stable at these insane clock frequencies. Running at 2133MHz is no joke and it’s still beyond what most platforms today are capable of running. To be honest the nForce 790i SLI is pushed nearly to its limits running memory this fast! Not once did the system blue screen and crash, but the cold booting issue was obvious for the week that I dedicated to using this memory on the EVGA nForce 790i SLI Ultra motherboard.

When it comes to overall performance the modules were not significantly faster than running memory unlinked at a lower clock frequency with the EPP 2.0 memory profile. By keeping all the settings the same except for the memory clock frequency it was an easy way to tell how much the memory clock is impacting performance. It seems that the extra clock frequency and memory bandwidth did help in some benchmarks, but only by as much as three percent. This is not a significant difference by any means. When it came to overclocking this kit was able to reach 2150MHz, but the board was becoming unstable at this point.

The true potential of this memory kit comes when manually overclocking the memory kit beyond the EPP 2.0 memory profile settings. By increasing the Front Side Bus beyond 410MHz the bottleneck on performance is slightly removed as you can see from my testing at 462MHz FSB. Both processors were running at 3.69GHz, so the difference in performance is thanks to the increased bus speed. At FSB speeds higher than 462MHz performance will continue to increase, but results will vary depending on the processor being used and how high the platform can run with stability.

Pricing on the Corsair TW3X2G2133C9DF memory kit is high, but don’t forget that it is the fastest memory kit in the World right now. The MSRP of the kit is $575, but online it can be found with a street price of $505.99. This is a high price to pay considering a Corsair XMS3 DHX PC3-12800 C9 memory kit costs just $110.00 after rebate and can easily run at the 1642MHz settings we used for this review. It’s hard to recommend a memory kit that is $396 more when the performance numbers just aren’t there (unless you ignore the EPP 2.0 settings and increase the FSB on your own). If you want the latest and greatest memory kit from Corsair and to be able to say you have the fastest memory kit in production then this kit is for you. For everyone else save a few bucks and go with a kit that offers more bang for the buck. It’s a shame that Corsair has a memory kit that runs perfectly at 2133MHz, but there are no mainstream platforms that can take advantage of this speed and extreme overclockers that need it don’t pay for hardware anyway as they get it for free.

Legit Bottom Line: The Corsair 2GB DOMINATOR 2133MHz memory kit is the real deal, but it needs a platform that can utilize the extra bandwidth!