Ask any enthusiast to name five of the top memory manufacturers and you're sure to get an answer something along the lines of "OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, Patriot and Kingston". All of these brands have been around long enough to establish a reputation among overclockers and gamers, with many having their own dedicated followers who stick with their preferred brand through thick and thin. So when we was contacted a few weeks ago from a company called Aeneon with an offering to test their latest DDR3 kit, the first question to run through our minds was "Who are you??".

 

While the name Aeneon may invoke a similar response from many other enthusiasts reading this review, the name of their parent company Qimonda is likely to trigger a few more positive responses. After all, Qimonda are responsible for a lot of the GDDR2, GDDR3 and even GDDR5 ram found on some of the most recent graphics cards and even "CellularRAM" used inside mobile phones and other handheld devices. Here's what Qimonda have to say:

 

 

 

For those of us with a thirst for knowledge, more information about Qimonda can be found on their website. However, chatting about Qimonda's life story is not the reason were here today - so let's cut the small talk and take a look at the specs of the DDR3 kit that arrived on the OC3D doorstep:

 

 

Probably the most interesting feature of Aeneon's DDR3-1333 kit is the JEDEC standard 1.5v requirement to get the modules running at their stock settings. If the IC's used on the modules scale well with extra voltage, we should hopefully be able to obtain some reasonable overclocking results with this significant amount of headroom.

 

One area not covered in the specs is the warranty provided with the modules. While this information should be readily available in the module specs, a quick re-tracing of our footsteps through the Aeneon website eventually led us to the goods. In short, Aeneon provide a 10yr warranty with all memory kits providing that they have been purchased inside the European Union. Further information can be found here.

 

An area I often moan about on memory kits is the over-use of the plastic blister style packaging. Sure it allows the modules contained within to be seen in their full glory when placed on retailers shelves, but it offers very little in the way of protection during shipping and takes away some of the excitement when unpacking your latest purchase.

 

While it would appear that Aeneon have followed suit with their latest Xtune kit, it's good to see that they've gone to the additional trouble of sealing the packaging together on all corners. This should help prevent the memory from getting "fingered" by customers while on retailers shelves, and certainly forced us to reach for the scissors in order to gain access to the modules for this review.

 

 

 

Very little information about the kit is provided to potential buyers, with the back and front of the packaging only containing the most basic of details. While it certainly would have been good to get a full specs list somewhere on the packaging, Aeneon probably opted for the "generic" approach so the paper inserts can easily be used with future memory kits.

 

 

 

The kit itself is a fairly simplistic affair, with black aluminium heatspreaders encircling each of the memory modules. While the heatspreaders certainly aren't as flashy as some of the offerings from OCZ, Patriot or Cellshock, the embossed/painted Xtune logo on the front of the kit goes a fair way to sprucing them up.

 

 

 

Unlike many of the Micron-based DDR3 2GB memory kits, the Aeneon kit is actually double-sided. This could possibly work in favour of the Xtune kit, as it means that the heat produced by the IC's is evenly spread over each side of the heatspreader.

 

Normally at this point we'd also discuss the choice of memory IC's used on the modules, but with little experience of anything outside the realms of Micron's D9 chips, the best we can do is provide you with the model number printed on the IC's  for conducting your own investigation: FSS25638.

 

 

To guarantee a broad range of results, the following benchmark utilities will be used:

 

 

 

As with all memory reviews on Overclock3D the Aeneon Xtune modules were subjected to a series of benchmark tests under several different configurations. The configurations used tested the memory's ability to run at high frequencies with stock timings, high frequencies with loosened timings and also ensured that that the modules could run with 100% stability at their advertised speed, latency and voltage settings.

  

 

Being naturally sceptical of almost every product that passes through the Overclock3D labs, I was almost certain that I'd have problems getting the Xtune modules to run at their stock settings with only 1.5v. However, I'm pleased to say that Aeneon proved me totally wrong, with the kit managing to run OCCT stable for several hours at DDR3-1333 / 8-8-8-15 on our P5K testbed.

 

 

 

While some DDR3 kits we've tested recently thrive on anything up to 2.0v, the Xtune modules seemed to hit their sweet spot at around 1.85v. This certainly didn't impede our overclocking experiences though, with the modules managing to hit DDR3-1524 on the stock 8-8-8-15 timings.

 

 

 

Relaxing the memory timings to 9-9-9-15 allowed for some staggering results, with the kit managing full OCCT stability at up to DDR3-1700. This is a full 184mhz (or DDR3-368) overclock from the stock speed of the modules, and puts the Aeneon kit in the number 1 spot with the highest percentage overclock of any DDR3 kit we've tested to date!

 

In addition to this, the kit also managed to complete 3DMark06 and all game benchmarks at up to DDR3-1732, but wasn't stable enough to complete 3DMark05 or any OCCT stress testing.

Sisoft Sandra is a synthetic benchmark utility capable of reporting and benchmarking a wide range of system components. As the focus of this review is around the performance of the Memory subsystem (rather than overall system performance), only the Memory Bandwidth and Memory Latency benchmarks are utilised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everest is in many ways similar to Sisoft Sandra. Focusing mainly on Software and Hardware information reporting, Everest also comes with a benchmark utility suitable for testing the read, write and latency performance of the memory subsystem.

 

 

 

ViMark is the latest addition to the OC3D testing process and a relatively new benchmarking application in general. Designed to take the inaccuracies and guesswork out of measuring the time taken to encode video files, ViMark produces easily comparable and consistent results for encoding Windows Media, Quicktime, AVI and Gif files.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7-Zip is an open source winzip-style file compression utility that has the ability to compress and decompress many file formats including it's own .7z compression scheme. 7-Zip also comes complete with its own benchmarking utility for gauging the compression and decompression speed of the system that it is installed on.

 

 

 

Cinebench 10 is a benchmarking tool based on the powerful 3D software Cinema 4D. Consequently, the results of tests conducted using Cinebench carry significant weight when analysing a computer’s performance in everyday use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

3DMark is a popular synthetic gaming benchmark used by many gamers and overclockers to gauge the performance of their PC's. All 3DMark runs were performed using the default configurations and with AA / AF disabled.

 

 

 

Quake 4 is a game built on the Doom 3 engine. Benchmarking was performed using Quake4Bench and a custom timedemo recording along with 0xAA, 0xAF settings at a resolution of 1024x768.

 

 

 

 

F.E.A.R. is a game based on the Lithtech Jupiter EX engine. It has volumetric lighting, soft shadows, parallax mapping and particle effects. Included in the game is a benchmark facility that taxes the entire PC system.

 

 

 

 

Unreal Tournament 3 is the highly anticipated game from Epic Games and Midway. The game uses the latest Unreal engine which combines fast gameplay along with high quality textures and lighting effects. All benchmarks were performed using UTbench (Bots/DM-BioHazard).

 

 

Being a memory kit that uses Qimonda's memory IC's rather than the "overclockers favourite" Micron D9, I was totally expecting to get to this part of the review and tell you about how the modules were no better than "average" in every respect. HOWEVER, (and yes that's a big one!) the Aeneon Xtune kit has totally taken me off guard by managing to reach speeds of DDR3-1700 on 1.85v with the timings relaxed to CAS9.

 

Unfortunately, after searching the internet extensively over the past few days we haven't been able to find a single retailer who stocks this particular kit. This makes it extremely hard to come to any kind of conclusion over whether the Xtune modules are actually good value for money, or simply a high-end memory kit downclocked to generate a bit of media excitement.

 

 

• Managed to clock all the way up to DDR3-1700 (a 22% overclock from stock).

• Rock solid operation at DDR3-1333 with only 1.5v

• Backed by a 10yr warranty.

 

•  Didn't respond well to tightening timings.

•  Performance deterioration over 1.85v

 

• Impossible to find anywhere that stocks it!

 

 

 

Thanks to Aeneon for making this review possible. Discuss this review in our forums.