Corsair Dominator GT 1600MHz AM3 Review

Introduction

Published: 2nd July 2010 | Source: Corsair | Price: £160.58 | Author: Milind Chidrawar

Corsair Dominator GT 1600MHz AM3 Kit

Introduction

“Hey, who's Corsair?” - This is a question that I would hope any PC Builder would know the answer to. Those who can't are clearly living under a rock somewhere in the nether regions of the Australian outback as today the Corsair brand are utterly huge. While the manufacturer's product portfolio has seen huge diversification by offering power supply units, cases, coolers and soon enough premium lager (I kid), their sole speciality was once performance memory.

So long as we have known, Corsair have been ambitious with their products from the days of low latency BH5 and high frequency TCCD DDR memory, to the infamous and highly regarded Micron D9GMH kits on DDR2. Of course, the party didn't stop there as DDR3 has steadily evolved, seeing kits with tighter timings, higher frequencies, lower voltages or all of the above. Today we will be taking a long hard look at one of Corsair's Dominator GT sets for the Socket AM3 platform.

In essence, what we have here is a 4GB dual channel set of memory, sporting a recommended clockspeed of 1600MHz. Of course, clockspeed means little when a kit's latency parameters are about as slack as a benefit fraudster's work ethic...

Thankfully, our sample kit is paired with a very respectable timing configuration of 7-7-7-20. For those who are less clued up on latency parameters, this is very tight indeed. Enough jibber jabber for now, here's a table of specifications to look at.

Manufacturer	Corsair
Model	2 x 2GB Dominator GT (CMG4GX3M2B1600C7)
Operational Frequency	1600MHz
Timings	7-7-7-20 1T
Voltage	1.65V
Intel XMP Profile	No
AMD BEMP Profile	Yes
Accessories	Active RAM Cooler

Sounds like a product with potential to us. Let's get to the photoshoot...

Most Recent Comments

02-07-2010, 04:45:48

tinytomlogan

Are you Phenom II users looking for some extra special RAM? Perhaps these might do it for you...

Continue Reading

02-07-2010, 06:59:59

AlienALX

You can just tell that has been designed for recent ROG boards

WTG Corsair !

02-07-2010, 07:11:46

tinytomlogan

Aye if the AMD's dont like high speed ram or at least overclocking the ram for high speeds then low latency just makes alot of sense.

03-07-2010, 07:36:48

silenthill

this ram is could boost your systems gaming performance specially for AMD platforms which suffer when compared to Intel's platforms.

04-07-2010, 09:37:26

Daylightdon

Should the latency numbers be higher or lower? What do they mean?

04-07-2010, 10:11:40

silenthill

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Daylightdon'

Should the latency numbers be higher or lower? What do they mean?

The latency numbers should be lower because the AMD processor memory controller can’t deal with high speed memory so the only thing that will improve performance is to lower the memory latency which means it will respond in less time to orders that come from the CPU so the lower the better. I have tried low latency memory on a 965 AMD CPU and it did improve the performance.

regards

04-07-2010, 10:23:03

Daylightdon

Thank you for responding. After having a computer built by Xtremegear here in California, I'm considering building one myself.

I will be using the Intel i7 860 CPU. I've not desided on a Motherboard yet but am researching it. The case will be a Coolermaster HAF 922 in RED!

04-07-2010, 11:59:45

silenthill

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Daylightdon'

Building your own system is a great experience and once you have done it you will never stop I’ve been building computers for over ten years now as a hobby and it gives you a great sense of achievement and I will be glad to assist you in any way the best i7 CPU right now is the 930 it over clocks really well with very little voltage increase and has 21 multiplier which is very handy for over clocking as for the motherboard the GIGABYTE X58A-UD3R and the Asus P6X58D-E are great choices they both have reasonable prices and are great over lockers and support the new USB3 and SATA 3 standards the Coolermaster HAF 922 is a great choice but be aware it doesn’t come with a side fan you will have to buy your own or just put two 120mm fans to cool your graphic card these are just some suggestions to help you, I know from experience buying components can be a really hard task and very confusing because there is a huge variety to buy from.

Regards

05-07-2010, 04:18:58

silvermane

this makes me want to do a AMD build

06-07-2010, 09:23:32

Precht

I've purchased this ram along with a Crosshair IV and a Phenom II X4 965 BE (C3). But when i open up AOD there's no BEMP profile for this memkit. Does anyone else have problems with this?

06-07-2010, 09:54:43

Daylightdon

Hello, Silenthill, What are your thoughts on this motherboard: ASUS P6T - LGA 1366 - X58 - DDR3 - ATX ?

Will the Corsair Dominator GT Memory work with the Intel i7 930? If so what is the correct model or part number?

06-07-2010, 10:49:06

tinytomlogan

This ram will work with i7 but its only dual channel. i7 is designed for tripple channel. Please keep the review threads on topic aswell dude.

06-07-2010, 12:42:41

silenthill

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Precht'

I've purchased this ram along with a Crosshair IV and a Phenom II X4 965 BE (C3). But when i open up AOD there's no BEMP profile for this memkit. Does anyone else have problems with this?

Try and download the latest BIOS for the ASUS Crosshair IV Formula and check if ASUS are supporting this RAM from there RAM support list it’s a PDF file that lists the entire ram supported in the Crosshair IV.

06-07-2010, 19:16:01

silenthill

Quote:

Originally Posted by name='Daylightdon'

This RAM is a dual channel kit it only supports core i5 and AMD socket AM3 boards you need a triple channel kit for core i7 as for the ASUS P6T its quite old now and it doesn't support USB3 and SATA3 but still I managed to overclock core i7 920 to 4GHz, not bad for a board that's been two year on the market now.

06-07-2010, 20:16:39

Daylightdon

OK Thanks much for the input. I will continue research.

Corsair Dominator GT 1600MHz AM3 Review

Introduction

Published: 2nd July 2010 | Source: Corsair | Price: £160.58 | Author: Milind Chidrawar

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