Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16GB DDR4 Review

Crucial have just released their latest memory kit with a refresh of the popular Ballistix Sport but is it enough to improve on the last version? Check out our findings…

Product on Review Ballistix Sport LT DDR4
Manufacturer & Sponsor: Crucial
Street Price: £177 GBP / $214 USD

DDR4 has been slow on the up-take thanks in part to the high price of Intel’s i7 CPUs, the X99 chipset and of course DDR4 itself. Nevertheless, DDR4 remains at the for front of PC memory technology and thus is the stalwart flagship of memory manufacturers. With DDR3 we saw huge heatspreaders but the popularity of such memory kits waned when it became problematic to fit the large CPU air coolers required to keep Intel’s CPUs cool. DDR4 then has seen a shift away from oversized heatsinks to low profile variants. Crucial, ever at the cutting edge of digital trends have also adopted the lower profile heatsinks to continue being one of the most popular brands of PC memory.

The last Ballistix Sport we reviewed impressed us and attained our Silver award so this latest revision has a lot to live up to. The new revision doesn’t appear to add very much on paper. In fact we struggled to see any difference. Even the heatspreaders themselves appeared near identical. Looking closer however and we see the heatspreader design has been tweaked slightly with vents uppermost and a digital camouflage sticker across the midriff. Is this enough to improve on the Ballistix Sports last outing though? Read on to find out…

About the Ballistix range

Designed for performance enthusiasts and anyone who simply wants to get more out of their system, Crucial Ballistix Sport performance memory helps you do just that. Give your processor the resources it needs to perform and make your computer faster and more responsive. Memory is fun when it’s faster, when it’s stylish, and when it helps your system perform at a higher level. Compared to standard PC memory, that’s exactly what Ballistix Sport is engineered to do. Get faster speeds and run demanding applications with ease. Multitask at will with increased bandwidth. And strike first with better latencies and reduced load times.

Specification

Product Highlights

• Speeds start at 2400 MT/s

• Faster speeds and responsiveness than standard Crucial® DDR4 memory

• Ideal for gamers and performance enthusiasts

• Four channel memory architecture maximizes data rates

• Digital camo heat spreader and black PCB

• Easy plug-and-play installation

• Intel® XMP 2.0 profiles for easy configuration

• Optimized for the latest Intel X99 platforms

• Limited lifetime warranty

Specification

Brand Ballistix
Form Factor UDIMM
Capacity 16GB kit (8GBx2)
Warranty Limited Lifetime
Specs DDR4 PC4-19200 • 16-16-16 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR4-2400 • 1.2V • 1024Meg x 64 •
Series Ballistix Sport
ECC NON-ECC
Kit Qty 2
Speed 2400 MT/S
Voltage 1.2V
DIMM Type Unbuffered

First Look

The modules look fairly inconspicuous yet very tidy with matching gun metal grey heatspreaders and ‘Camo’ sticker inserts contrasting against the black PCB. Standing just 32mm high they should be easily accommodated with all modern oversized heatspreaders. We liked the louvres which will assist in heat dissipation and enhance the aesthetics.

To the rear of the modules we find two additional stickers which gives us the basic specifications such as vDIMM, bandwidth and the primary timings. The kits have XMP profiling built in which you will need to set to get the advertised timings and bandwidth to latch. The other sticker to the left contains a couple of bar codes and serial number, presumably required for warranty purposes and to determine the batch code.

The main difference between this kit and the standard kit is the digital Camo. While this is all good and well, we would have instead preferred a different colour heatsink to differentiate between this and the standard sport kit as at first glance, the two kits look identical both in terms of specification and looks.

Overall, we liked the look of the kit but as stated, there isn’t a lot to choose between this and the older Sport kit and certainly not enough difference to warrant and upgrade should you already have the older kit.

Test Setup & Methodology

GPU: NVIDIA GTX 760
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000
Cooler: Corsair H105
Motherboard: MSI X99S Gaming 9 AC
SSD: Corsair Force LX 512GB

Memory on test

Crucial Ballistix Sport LP 16GB (4x4GB) 2400MHz 16-16-16-39 1T

GSKILL RipJawZ 16GB (4x4GB) 2800MHz 16-16-16-36 2T
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4x4GB) 2400MHz 16-16-16-39 2T
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4x4GB) 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 2T
Crucial Desktop 16GB (4x4GB) 2133MHz 15-15-15-36 2T

Benchmarks

We have taken a long hard look at our memory benchmarks and feel that many of the utilities that are commonly used such as games and ‘overall’ benchmarking systems give an inaccurate representation of the memory on test. For example, a game is just as likely to be influenced by CPU speed as memory speed and if the CPU frequency is required to be adjusted to attain the correct bandwidth then there is little point in using said game as a benchmark as the system with the higher CPU speed will possibly reflect a greater score. IT is akin to testing a set of tyres at 100Mph and then testing another set at 50Mph. You wouldn’t compare the results between them so we don’t think it is correct for us to compare results of benchmarks where there are other influencing factors at play. For this reason we will be sticking to memory specific benchmarks for our comparisons. While these will not show ‘real world’ effects, they will show you which kit is the faster and thus you can draw your own conclusions from those results more accurately than using a game as the basis of comparison! The following tests were used to compare performance of the memory kits on test:

SiSoft Sandra
AIDA64
Passmark 8

SiSoft Sandra

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is the successor to Everest ULTIMATE. This application not only details every component within a system but it also incorporates a comprehensive memory benchmarking tool that will ascertain bandwidth and latency figures.

Passmark8

Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing and benchmarking. PassMark PerformanceTest ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers. Memory tests allocating and accessing memory speed and efficiency.

Conclusion

In truth, we had a hard time discerning why Crucial had asked us to test this kit when we first received it and honestly believed their had been an admin error somewhere because we believed we had tested this kit before with the original Ballistix Sport. It wasn’t until we looked a little closer that we realised this kit did have a few subtle differences. It is our opinion though that the differences do little to justify a ‘new’ product sadly. That isn’t to say this is a bad memory kit, far from it. It retains its silver status but we had hoped for more.

The specifications are near identical to the older Ballistix Sport which would have led us to believe that the kit would also perform the same. Performance however is enhanced ever so slightly but with that performance increase came a slight drop in the additional bandwidth we could attain (2750MHz as opposed to the reference 2400MHz). This could easily be quantified though by different batch numbers as not all memory kits from the same family are guaranteed to overclock the same. So then, we would say that the differences are purely aesthetic.

If you are looking for a modern , smart looking memory kit then this kit is certainly worthy of consideration. We are however puzzled as to why Crucial would release a near identical specified kit with the same bandwidth and timings as the original Ballstix Sport without so much as a colour difference. If digital camouflage is your bag then you may want to pump the extra £10 into this kit, otherwise we would say save your money and get the ‘normal’ kit.

Short in stature with unobtrusive aesthetics, the Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 kit offers a good balance between performance and cost.

Pros
+ Solid performance
+ Discreet looks
+ Overclocking headroom

Cons
– Not enough to justify a ‘new’ release