GSkill RipjawsZ PC3 17000 CL9 Quad Channel Memory Kit

Gigabyte X79 UD7 - X79 Chipset
Intel Core i7 3960x (3.3Ghz) Hex Core 6 x 256KB L2 Cache 15MB L3 Cache
Custom Watercooler
1x nVidia GTX 580
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150gb SerialATA 10000RPM
LG 20x Super Multi GSA-H55L
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

4x GSKill RipjawsZ PC2133 16GB DDR3 (9-11-12-28)

Reference Memory
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
2x Kingston HyperX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-11-9-27)

Reference memory was tested on P67 using a 2600K processor XMP enabled at default speed.

Sandra is a software collection of synthetic benchmarks that will give us a basic idea as to what a system is capable of. It should be noted that SiSoft numbers change depending on what version you have installed; these were recorded using Sandra Professional Version 18.26.2012.1

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking software package designed to assist with overclocking and general system tuning.  The package also contains modules to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives in addition to normal stuff like stress testing and troubleshooting.  

UT3 is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series.  It has no story mode gameplay and is exclusively designed for multiplayer action.  While the gameplay and weapons are similar to the UT2004 counterpart, the gaming engine is all new.  For this benchmark, we're using the UT3Bench tool from Guru3D, and CarbonFire Botmatch to record framerates.  The resolution was set to 1680x1050 since we wanted to access total system performance.

Crysis is based in a fictional future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island off the coast of China.  Crysis uses DirectX 10 for graphics rendering.  For this benchmark we are using the Crysis Benchmarking Tool to run the Assault Harbor demo at 1680x1050 with global quality set to High.

We choose to match up 2600K scores with our 3960X just to see how different the two systems really are, and yet so similar.  Starting with the Sandra tests we can see that the extra cores do translate into more CPU power and that the quad channel memory controller delivers roughly twice the memory bandwidth.  Moving to the AIDA64 scores we can see that even though there is more bandwidth available the RipjawsZ are actually considerably slower in terms of overall latency despite having similar frequency and CAS ratings.  This is likely due more to the IMC than the actual module.

Finally we can see how all of this translates into actual game performance with only slight gains from the 3960X which are likely due to the faster CPU clock and memory bandwidth.