Date: August 22, 2007 - Author: Rob Williams
DDR3 might be lurking out there, but DDR2 is still the most popular option for most people, and for good reason. It's fast, and currently, very inexpensive. Although there are many PC2-6400 kits available, Kingston puts a twist on their's by offering it with tight 3-3-3 timings.
Since DDR3's launch this past May, things have died down a bit on the DDR2 front. This past January, Corsair released fast PC2-10000 ram, which is basically touching the DDR2 ceiling, at least right now. Other companies topped that kit after it's release, but Corsair's is the only one I've ever seen on sale (and it still is today). The sad fact is, DDR2 only became popular for most people in May 2006 with the launch of AMD's AM2 platform, and it seemed to have been ousted as soon as it was becoming truly popular.
So we have the DDR3 launch, and all is fine and good. Except that it happens to be expensive as heck. Not many people really want to pay $500 for a 2GB kit, so as far as that's concerned, DDR2 is still king. Add to that, I have not really seen a real-world scenario where DDR3 has an advantage. MHz for MHz, power consumption is lower, but the slight increase in your power bill will likely be overshadowed by the $300 premium you are paying for the ram to begin with.
Now that my DDR3 rant is out of the way, let's get right to the review of Kingston's latest DDR2 kit, the HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 CL3. Though pricing is not available at this time, I assume that it will fall in line with other similar kits on the market and not go beyond the $170USD mark. One thing is for sure... this is a fantastic time to buy ram. Not long ago, a nice kit would run you at least $300, but now it's half that. It's prices like these that make 4GB rigs so much more attractive.
There are few PC2-6400 CL3 kits on the market, for a few reasons. First is that having a CAS Latency of 3 on most modules isn't that possible without an asinine amount of voltage. Even this kit uses 2.35V which is getting high as is. Most kits with similar speeds stick to CL4 and some even use CL5. But with prices as they are today, you might as well get your money's worth.
As mentioned above, what makes this kit special is the CL3. Here's where I am uncertain though. This kit could either be 3-4-4-8 or 3-3-3-8... I was unable to retrieve an answer regarding it from Kingston prior to writing this review. I will add an addendum once I find out for sure. Although, it doesn't matter, because as you will find out on the next page, this kit proved completely stable at 3-3-3-8 with stock timings.
Arriving in the usual tight-blister-pack, the blue modules are well protected during shipment. No timings information can be found, but the voltage is.
Once freed from their plastic prison, you can see the modules in their full glory. Though simple, I love the look of Kingston's modules, which may or may not be due to the fact that I love the color blue. That aside, they are well equipped to dissipate heat, but fans should be used if you plan on doing some big overclocks.
The back of the modules look even cooler, thanks to the fact that it's sticker-less. But it doesn't have the bold "ASSY IN USA" statement as the front does though.
Let's hop right into our testing methodology and then our testing.
Nowadays, it's not uncommon to pick up a decent kit of DDR2 that won't hit 600MHz, and this one was no exception. After all said and done, I had it running completely stable at 610MHz, with 2.50v. If you plan to replicate this setting, I highly recommend using a fan to keep your modules cool, as 2.4v+ is getting into dangerous territory.
Stock timings is 3-3-3-8, but move to 4-4-4 and you can drop a whopping 0.55v. While retaining those 4-4-4 settings, moving all the way up to 500MHz was possible, but with 2.20v. That's still less than stock voltage however, so we will see in our graphs if that's a better setting to use. Even 550MHz with 4-4-4 timings was possible, but it was using 2.60v, which I don't recommend to anyone unless they have real good cooling.
Overall, I am pleased with the overclocking potential seen here. It didn't blow me away, but this isn't a high-performance kit, such as say, a PC2-9200. 600MHz proved stable, which is always the goal I try to hit with any kit that rolls into our labs.
Regardless of what performance-related part we are reviewing, there are a few conditions that we meet prior to benchmarking:
Below is all of the information regarding our testing machine. Links lead to our review of said product.
Sandra is always the first benchmark to come to mind when we need to do memory benchmarking. Or CPU benchmarking. Or storage benchmarking. You get the idea. It's a superb all-around tool that we rely on quite often.
Stock settings were nice, but shooting up the CPU another 75MHz and increasing the frequency to DDR2-900 (while loosening the timings a bit) gave us quite a nice gain. Moving to 5-5-5 hurt though, except at 610MHz, not surprisingly.
Next on the list is Everest 3.5, with it's read/write and latency tests. These benchmarks are heavily CPU bound as well though, so the higher your CPU frequency, the better effects your memory overclocks will have.
This is not a memory benchmark per se, but rather one that stresses a single core of your CPU to it's full potential. Because it crunches such an insane amount of digits, tighter timings and faster memory generally offers better results. We choose to run with an 8 million test, as anything lower flies by too fast on a Core 2 Duo and it's hard to generally see the differences that way.
Though it's no longer in development, Sciencemark is a tool I still like to keep in my chest... err thumb drive. It gives results far more in-depth than other benchmarking programs out there, although you'd have to be an engineer to care for -all- the information it delivers. It generates a bandwidth result just like Everest and Sandra does, and is effected by higher CPU clocks.
Here, we compare our overclocks of the memory being reviewed alongside other recently evaluated sticks. These graphs include benchmarks with each kit of ram at DDR2-1000 4-4-4-12-13 2.1v along with each kits own top overclock. While the DDR2-1000 results should not vary much, the top end overclocks will, given that each kit will top out differently.
For reference, here are the top overclocks for each kit of ram included:
If you are looking for a modest kit with great latencies, this kit will serve you well. Although 400MHz is far from being considered 'high-performance', it's tight 3-3-3 timing-set help it walk away a winner. However, as we seen throughout our graphs, if you are at all interested in overclocking your CPU, you can achieve far greater performance with increasing the memory frequency, even while loosening up the timings.
One thing is for sure though. DDR3 might be here, but DDR2 will be preferred by most people for some time. DDR3 offers nothing more to you unless you have specific needs, so until prices for that go down, DDR2 is your best bet. And since you can get killer 2GB kits for only $150 - $180, it makes you wonder why DDR3 is even available to the consumer right now.
But, I digress. If you want a great PC2-6400 kit, you won't be disappointed with this one. And if you are using Vista, or want to experience the best computing has to offer, you might even consider picking up two kits to hit 4GB of ram, to "future-proof" (aka, few-months-proof) your machine.
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