It use to only be companies that ran server farms or other high performance computing operations looking for ways to save money on the power bill. With such large scale operations, every watt makes a big difference to the yearly power bill. Nowadays, even every day computer users are looking for ways to cut back on their power consumption. Today, we’ll be checking out some memory from Kingston Technology that does just that.
Saving power in a computer system has a cumulative effect. This means that every bit helps. Kingston has been able to accomplish some extra power savings with with their newest HyperX 4GB 1866MHz LoVo DDDR3 memory modules. Or maybe low voltage means high overclocking? Let’s see how they do in testing.
Features and Specifications
The LoVo series leads the market with the new JEDEC low voltage industry standard. Kingston’s state of the art LoVo DDR3 memory requires a meager 1.25 volts to operate at 1333MHz. And, they’ve been able to engineer these low voltage memory modules at 1600MHz, 1800MHz, as well as our impressive 1866MHz memory kit here requiring an impressively low 1.35 volts.
The timings clock in at 9-9-9-27 which isn’t really an issue. Why? Well, most energy conscious users aren’t interested in overclocking or benchmarking their systems. However, should you feel the need to push your CPU and motherboard, there are two XMP profiles to get your “freq on.” XMP Profile 1 automatically gets you to 1600MHz and XMP Profile 2 automatically configures your BIOS to 1866MHz.
If that isn’t your particular goal, you might also be interested in their 1333MHz and 1600MHz DDR3 that requires only 1.25 volts to operate. Those will obviously save you some money and don’t require getting crazy in the BIOS to get the most out of the memory.
Unfortunately for INTEL X58 users, the new LoVo products currently only come in dual channel memory kits. This should be just fine for INTEL P55 and AMD fans out there. We’ve also learned that Kingston no more 1866MHz kits are being produced. It’s just easier and more feasible to produce the 1800MHz products. Either way, you’re still getting your money’s worth as the pricing is very aggressive.
Some New HyperX Spreaders
The LoVo DDR3 Memory doesn’t use Kingston’s signature blue HyperX spreaders. We figure since the kit is power efficient that Kingston opted for a new metallic, green heat spreader. It kind of fits really.
What you can’t see underneath the spreaders are the ICs. Kingston’s engineers had to engineer and find the very best of the bins just like they did when creating their high end HyperX 2133MHz DDR3 CAS 8 memory kits. Only the very best of the ICs were used in the creation of the LoVo series. Given their design, we don’t expect these kits to match the blue HyperX overclock for overclock. But, we do expect the blues and greens to match byte for byte.
Speaking of enthusiasts, if you happen to have the latest Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors on a motherboard sporting an Intel P55/P55A or H55 chipset, your system is readily compatible. You might want to consult your motherboard vendor first to see if a BIOS update is needed to recognize the XMP profiles.
Our particular 1866MHz kit functioned just fine on ASUS, GIGABYTE, and MSI motherboards of all flavors and sizes on hand. We didn’t use all of them though to benchmark anything, but we did physically do a check so that you’ll know that they’ll work for you too.
System Setup and Test Methodology
As mentioned, while there could be some random board issues, the memory posed no issues booting up and detecting XMP profiles properly on a range of boards from ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, and even ASRock. However, you should double check your voltage settings in the BIOS once you boot up.
Most of the boards automatically tuned the memory voltage to 1.5 volts, which is standard. But because these are low voltage modules, you may have to manually apply the settings just to run at the proper specifications. If you don’t have 1.25V or 1.35V settings, it won’t hurt the memory at all to go 1.3 or 1.4 volts, but at a power consumption penalty of course.
Here’s the test system we’ve happily used many times now to ensure for optimal performance:
- Intel Core i7-870 Lynnfield LGA1156 Processor
- GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD6 Motherboard
- Memory Kit One: Kingston HyperX 4GB 1866MHz DDR3 Memory (as tested)
- Memory Kit Two: OCZ Platinum4GB 1800MHz DDR3 Memory
- ZOTAC Geforce GTX285 Infinity Edition Video Card
- Kingston V+ 128GB SSDNow (Rev2.0)
- Antec CP-850 Watt Power Supply
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit was our operating system of choice for all tests and we made sure that the latest drivers and BIOS were used. For presenting memory performance numbers, we used SANDRA, Everest Ultimate Edition, Sarsky’s HD Compilation video benchmark, and Unigine Heaven DX10 Demo.
Over Clocking and Under Clocking Benefits?
Like anything the HyperX team produces, there’s always something extra underneath the hood. But the thing we need to remember is that the LoVo kit is engineered to provide more performance at high frequencies requiring less power. That said, here’s what we experienced.
Our particular test board doesn’t provide .05V increments. So, 1.4V managed to give us about 1950MHz without issue. Going up to 1.5V which starts going in to the previous JEDEC standards, the kit was quite nimble at 2000MHz using 9-9-9-27 timings. Going much higher will have sporadic results and stability issues given the design of the ICs.
There is one benefit you may not know about. Even if your motherboard doesn’t support memory above 1600MHz, you can still get great performance from these extremely fast kits. Without modifying the voltages, users can lower the frequencies to 1600MHz using 7-7-7-21 timings, or 1333MHz with 6-6-6-18 timings. Have a look at the chart below to see the gains.
As you can see, the lower timings give you maximum bandwidth and performance that the kits with higher timings can’t hope to match. This will come in handy especially among pro-users who use large data intensive programs like PhotoShop. Kind of cool, huh?
Moving right along, we tested the Kingston LoVo kit using both XMP profiles using memory timings reported by CPUZ. To see if there were extra performance benefits, manual timings were also attempted and tested where possible.
SiSoftware SANDRA Memory Bandwidth
SiSoftware’s easy to use memory benchmark gives us a good idea of the memory bandwidth your processor readily has on hand for getting work done. Our 1866MHz memory kit scores just slightly higher than the 1800MHz kit. This is some massive bandwidth compared to memory from three years ago. Let’s see where this bandwidth will come into play with the coming benchmarking.
Everest Ultimate Edition
Since we already showed you the benefits of 1600MHz with lower timings, we gave only the upper stock and overclocked frequencies a spin. This is a good example of why the system just seems to haul butt when using performance memory.
GraySky 3.0 HD Encoding
As you can see here, whether you’re using the system’s default 1333MHz frequency, or one of the XMP profiles, there’s plenty of performance gain when doing some video rendering. Since rendering programs attempt to shove everything into available memory, the faster RAM definitely wins the day.
Unigine Heaven DX10 Demo
The obvious benefits you’ll notice with 3D applications is more responsiveness during challenging scens and higher frame rates as the system’s memory bandwidth and CPU frequencies increase. It’s also why many gamers do a little overclocking now and then as it does help get a few extra frames when needed.
Final Thoughts
The mission of the LoVo memory is two fold. It offers users the same, or better level of performance you would expect from more extreme DDR3 memory kits. It also offers the latest JEDEC standard, further motivating energy conservation innovation. Like all new memory standards, you can expect even better performance and timings as more advanced ICs are engineered. If you’re an extreme benchmark guru, you’ll want to consider using the 1.65V memory instead of these LoVo parts.
As far as the Kingston HyperX 4GB 1866MHz DDR3 LoVo memory is concerned, you won’t find a more energy efficient dual channel memory kit on the market. With limited 1866MHz quantities and performance being so close to the 1800MHz kits, it only makes sense to spend your money on the latter. Kingston’s LoVo DDR3 memory provide “green” performance without costing you much of your hard earned green. There’s definitely no downside to running these modules in your system.
Pros
- Low voltage, energy efficient memory
- Newest JEDEC engineering
- Premium ICs underneath
- Fastest low voltage memory available
- Aggressive pricing
Cons
- IF you don’t like green…
- Triple Channel Kits not available…yet…
Overall Rating: 9.5 / 10.0
