XMP & Corsair

heighnub

heighnub

heighnub

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Joined
30 Jun 2011
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I'm looking at buying something like:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-313-CS

I've noticed that the max SPD profile is 1333MHz, 9-9-9-24 whereas XMP has a 1600MHz, 10-10-10-27 profile.

My understanding is that the XMP profile indicates that the RAM has been "certified" to be stable at these values.

So why doesn't Corsair just add the XMP profile to the SPD list?

I find it annoying that manufacturers sell their products rated for a certain speed, but in order to achieve this speed, you have to overclock. My current Kingston Hyper X RAM only works at the advertised DDR2 800Mhz if I up the default voltage and play with obscure timing values. According to SPD, it is a 533Mhz module.

I understand that XMP now makes this overclock process a lot easier but why is it needed in the first place?
 
I assume that SPD settings can only be used that comply with the JEDEC standards.

As the JEDEC standard for DDR3 only goes up to 1,333MHz then that would seem to be the highest speed allowed to be included.

Serial Presence Detect

Intel XMP would seem to essentially be a workaround allowing the profile to be stored even though it doesn't comply with JEDEC standards.
 
Intel Corporation officially introduced the eXtreme Memory Profile (XMP) Specification on March 23, 2007 to enable enthusiast performance extensions to the traditional JEDEC SPD specifications for DDR3 SDRAM
Click to expand...

Perhaps that answers your question then.

The Intel XMP profile appears to contain "enthusiast performance extensions" not covered by the JEDEC SPD specifications.
 
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