8GB 1600 Corsair CL9 vs Samsung CL11

Is there any significant performance difference between these two RAM kits?

Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory (CMSX8GX3M2A1600C9) --> CL9

Samsung 8GB Dual Channel Kit 2 x 4 GB 204 pin DDR3-1600 SO-DIMM (1600Mhz, PC3-12800S, CL11) --> CL11

 

No.

Both high quality, brand names. Pick the least expensive one (shipped, with taxes, to your door with the best warranty/return policy).

With integrated graphics, on an AMD APU (and to a lesser extent to Intel igpu's too) you may see a small difference with the CL9 Sodimms - but nothing worth paying more for.

(Of the two, I've had nothing but great luck with the Vengenance).

Good luck.

 

Zero practical difference. tilleroftheearth nailed it and I don't have anything to add.

That said I've historically gone with Corsair because I'm familiar with their customer service and RMA policies.

 

Thank you guys for your opinion. I think I´ll also go for Corsair because I already have a Corsair kit in my current laptop and my next laptop will be one without discrete graphics (ideally intel HD4000).

 

Buy Samsung. I did so.

I personally have now Vengeance 1600 CL9 and I recently purchased Samsung CL11. Because Samsung is better.

1. Corsair Vengeance has much cheaper and worse memory chips. It is little chance that it will be DOA. Just a little but still exists. Samsung has smaller fail rate than Corsair Vengeance.
2. Corsair is 1.5V while Samsung is 1.35V. Which means it gives less heat. It uses less power (not much bigger impact on battery life but why not?)
3. Samsung is much newer (more than 1 year newer model). It uses 30nm chips.
4. Feedback on Samsung RAM on Newegg is Excellent. 4.83Stars. Newegg.com - SAMSUNG 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model MV-3T4G3D/US
People say that it feels better than HyperX RAM!
5. It is 6$ cheaper on Newegg.

6. And last which is important for me personally but may be not useful for you. Samsung memory chips are able to work faster than 2133Mhz. Corsair's chips struggle to work at 1866Mhz when I overclock. Sasmsung RAM already was overclocked to 2133Mhz by some people on NBR and this is what I gonna do. But as I said it may be useless for you if you don't like to overclock and unless you have old DDR3 laptop or laptop with custom memory timing you have to buy software for overclocking.

 

I'm sorry James D but most of those points are immaterial. You'll need to do the following in order to make an effective argument:
A) Provide links or other hard evidence e.g. for #1, show pictures with the serial nos. of the chips then objectively state why certain memory chips are "worse"
B) Show why items in A) are relevant to the decision making process e.g. why does it matter

I would be genuinely surprised if you can do A) (obviously minus the price-related points) and further impressed if you could do B). Actually I'd be damned.

That kind of stuff is just mindless - do the credibility of this forum and humanity a favor and don't make an argument based on "what people say" again.

As a last point (not necessarily related to James D's post) - realize the motherboard has to support low voltage memory in order for low voltage memory to actually run at low voltage. The motherboard may just run your 1.35V memory at 1.5V anyway which won't do any harm but it defeats the purpose entirely. Lower voltage memory is beneficial if the motherboard can utilize it but only to a marginal degree at best - the RAM is just a piece of a larger system, after all. In order to be convinced low voltage memory matters, I'd need to be shown temperature readings and most importantly (for notebook users, that is), power draw readings which would translate into battery life changes.

 

Then I have to generally surprise you at least

A) I consider myself an expert in RAM (Memory questions) and I spent many hours of searching advantages of Samsung SO-DIMM RAM. Really. Same about Corsair Vengeance since the time they appeared on the market.

Samsung latest RAM modules are MV-3T4G3D/US. And they use Samsung 30nm HYK0 memory chips K4B2G0846D. For the ability of these memory chips be extremely highly overclocked visit here holy smoke..Samsung 30nm HYK0..1.64v 2400 c9 - OCXtreme.org Forums
Also previous version of Samsung So-Dimm modules used older chips and older technology process (unlike from newest 30nm) and were able to overclock up to 2133Mhz CL12 which you can find in my thread on NBR where I also reviewed OCing possibilities of Corsair Vengeance RAM http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...extreme-boost-1600-2133-beyond-jedec-xmp.html

Now about Corsair Vengeance. I personally have it and personally tried to overclock it to at least 1866Mhz Cl10 and had artifacts playing any game (on IGP of Macbook Pro with 2720QM). Any stress test moved it to Blue screen. The only thing was successful was booting laptop. Also I found that from 2x4GB kit only 1 of modules was good to boot. 2nd module was much worse and had 50% of success in boot. And it is not just me as I read complaints talking about DOA 1 module from 2x4GB kit. I had 2 kits and all of them had 1 good module and another almost not capable to work anyhow better than stock. If you need proof of ownership I can easily post photos of 1 kit I still have.

Vengeance 1866 RAM (more expensive than 1600Mhz one) has Micron D9PFJ memory chips which is still worse than Samsung's. And barely capable of OCing to 2133Mhz on 1.5V tested in my thread. More about this chip which is ONLY in 1866Mhz RAM read here. Micron D9PFJ - OCXtreme.org Forums

B) Would you be happy if you get Corsair DOA RAM? I doubt. For last 2 days I read 2 threads about DOA Corsair So-Dimms (Value 1600 CL11 RAM) and it shows that Corsair is not as reliable as it once was. No time to search that threads but 1 of it is MSI GE 70/60 owner's lounge.
About 1.35V modules. Ivy bridge supports 1600L modules which you can find in spec sheets or on official site. If he has older laptop then still it is pretty high chance that it will work as it says.
Do I have to say why 6$ cheaper is better?
Also temperature of Samsung working on stock will be much cooler which helps cooling CPU and GPU in thin latops. It can save lets say 3-4 degrees. Here I just guess about temp difference but I know it will be.

P.S. Don't worry Charles, I am happy I got an opportunity to show off

 

Show off you certainly did though unsuccessfully; I didn't read where/how I could tell it makes a difference. Not a difference by your definition (which is a difference regardless of scale) - a difference as in, "my computer feels different today, it must be that new low voltage RAM I installed". I don't play games where sub-10% differences are counted because they aren't noticed by human beings (perhaps robots).

I won't dabble too far into overclocking as I did my share some time ago; realize despite your exhaustive personal efforts to overclock a particular chip, you surely understand that each chip behaves differently despite the fabricator's best efforts.

The point I'm attempting to get across is that you're welcome to post your personal opinion (which may or may not be derived from your personal experience, hopefully it is) but don't present your opinions as blanket facts because that would probably only be the case by coincidence. Furthermore don't lose sight of the original question:

You really didn't answer it; you posted some semi-relevant information and some not relevant information, which ultimately looks to me like an attempt to do exactly what you said, show off for the sake of doing so (putting it bluntly as I can). I know a thing or two about building reputation and your way isn't the way.

 

Charles, Did I ever wrote smth about any significant performance difference? Or can't anyone follow up the theme of the thread taking into account the first answers? In fact I have a feeling that you are trying to be picky to me and you feel hurt for smth.

In fact I could write a coursework about gained performance of overclocking RAM and impact of brands on results if I had value reasons. But the only time when I mentioned about real performance gains was...

...exactly what you have just welcomed.

In fact I would become a stranger for myself if I said " IMO stock clocks of 1600Mhz CL11 are faster than CL9 one".

But when performance is the same then other facts are in a game: reliability, price, impact on temperature etc. And nobody needs to prove that good is good.

I won't start arguing when even selecting an object of arguing is under arguing. I'd like to know the opinion of the 3-rd person tilleroftheearth about quality of my post and opinion of the OP if my information was useful for him or not.

 

Samsung has been in the memory business for quite some time and they do it well so I expect them to be better than Corsair's product. Things break or fail but I also expect better quality control from Samsung too. It won't make much difference so as long as the RAM works as advertised. I'd go for the Samsung's myself for the same reasons JamesD has mentioned. Corsair RAM is not bad, sometimes there's duds but maybe that's because Corsair does not have the R&D funds like Samsung does.

Less heat and less energy when you need the most battery life and high performance memory when plugged in. Sounds ideal.

 

James D, I'll take the quality of your post at face value as I do not overclock nor benchmark RAM myself. I can believe Samsung makes the highest quality RAM modules - well, at least vs. Corsair's Vengeance series...

However, Charles is right to point out that the OP's question did not get answered with your posts (at least in any direct way I can tell).

Furthermore, at stock clocks (1600MHz) the Corsair will be the 'faster' one.

The best 'buy' in RAM - at identical STOCK clocks - will be what I've already stated:

Pick the cheapest one to your door with a return policy.

And 'on point', I'll stress once again: Performance differences in real world usage scenarios is all but nil. But I would love to see any real world performance differences with your Sodimm overclocking pursuits.

 

I did some comparative tests between 1.35V and 1.5V RAM in my Samsung NP900X4C and the former showed a small power saving (around 0.3W IIRC) under full load with less difference on idle when the RAM power consumption is much less. The saving is likely to translate to 2 to 3 % of overall notebook power consumption: Perhaps 10 to 15 minutes on a notebook that achieve 10 hours on battery.

John

 

Oh, I didn´t think that my question would stir up such a heated discussion Nevertheless thank you all for your contributions! I haven´t bought the new RAM yet because I am still waiting a bit with my purchase of the new laptop.

 

John, thank you for that additional data point.

Actually, I would say that the 'power savings' is even lower than I would have imagined (~15 minutes on a 10 Hr. battery life span).

Would you have any data to add on temps with the different Voltaged Sodimms?

 

I'd get samsung, simply because i know they produce alot of memory and nand. Assuming same price, otherwise i'd get the cheapest.

 

I have those samsung chips running at 2133mhz, I'll tell you it gets warm-ish but not hot. Heat and power differences between 1.35 and 1,5v are negligible to be honest. Also, I'm aware there is software within windows to alter CL timings, I can almost guarantee that the Samsung chips can do CL9 without error. However, the advantage from overclocking is only relevant if you have a BIOS which supports it.
Even at 2133mhz, you notice very little difference in performance since I had to bump the latency to CL12 from CL11 due to instability, you basically have the same snapinness but your WinRAR is a bit faster.
HD4000 graphics stop scaling beyond 1866mhz even with tight latencies from what I've noticed, the internal 8mb RAM does a stellar job to mask the problems with memory bandwidth.

RAM temperature at stock is warm, almost cool. The Samsung chips get warmer if OCed to 2133mhz and you are gaming on the iGPU but without an infrared gun, I can't be more objective than that.

 

This is a bit old but I was looking up RAM and glad I found these comments about Samsung RAM. I would definately choose it over Corsair. Corsair has tons of RMAs. I'm sure Samsung gets their share of them too, but I don't think Corsair is what it used to be, their high performance RAM is always using more voltage and looser timings than other brands.

And why is that moderators are always the most stubborn and offensive posters? A guy was trying to help out and got nothing by criticism, when he knew a lot more about RAM than anyone else. Performance is not just FPS or whatever, but heat, battery life and OC ability are also peformance factors. And if you have an AMD APU, the faster RAM and lower latency will help GPU performance quite well.