Kingston runs at 1280MHz

Product: Ime produkta
Website: www.kingston.com
System Requirements: Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon or compatible CPU
DDR2 motherboard
Recommended EVGA Nforce 680i
Price: €364.00 for 2x1 GB kit

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WHEN it comes to a memory overclocking we are usually talk about Corsair or OCZ. I dont remember when was the last time I wrote an overclocking article about Kingston. Well, the times changes and Kingston yet again decided to get back in the prestigue league. Kingston has its HyperX memory for a while but it use to be boring as it was late to market with any impressive speed. Well this changes today as Kingston has 1200 MHz memory on market.

We had a chance to get our hands on KHX9600D2K2/2G or DDR 1200. As we prefer to overclock anything that gets to our hands we pushed this memory even faster. Out of the box specification includes 5-5-5-15 at 2.3 or 2.35V.

Kingston 9600 KHX9600D2/1G modules pack

The memory has blue heat spreads that kind of help to cool the memory but the key magic is in chips under the hood.

We tried the memory at three different settings DDR 2 800, DDR 2 1200 and the last stop was magical 1280. We managed to boot the machine at 1333 MHz and to get at least in windows at 1300 but we could not get it stable. We can confirm that this memory at 2.4V and EVGA Nforce i680 motherboard goes to 1280 MHz.

Benchmarketing

We used:
Intel Core 2 Extreme E6800, 2x 2.93GHz, 266MHz FSB, 4MB Cache
Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 400GB SATA NCQ hard drive
Leadtek Geforce 8800GTS OCZ 700W gameXstream Akasa EVO AK 922 Blue Athlon 64/X2/FX cooler and Intel CPU's

FEAR	1024x768	1280x960	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 800MHz 5-5-5-15	181	143	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1200MHz 5-5-5-15	184	146	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1280MHz 5-5-5-15	185	147	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
FEAR High Quality FSAA 4X + Aniso 8X	1024x768	1280x960	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 800MHz 5-5-5-15	114	78	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1200MHz 5-5-5-15	115	78	?	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1280MHz 5-5-5-15	115	80	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Super_Pi	1MB	8MB	32MB	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 800MHz 5-5-5-15	17s	03m 48s	17m 53s	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1200MHz 5-5-5-15	17s	03m 36s	17m 02s	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1280MHz 5-5-5-15	17s	03m 35s	16m 56s	?
?	?	?	?	?
Sandra 2007	Memory Bandwith	Memory Latency	Cache&Memory
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 800MHz 5-5-5-15	5714/5727	81ns / 78.8	23165MBs /84.9	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1200MHz 5-5-5-15	5736/5745	67ns / 65.1	24833MBs /71.2	?
Kingston Hyper KHX9600D2K2 1280MHz 5-5-5-15	5747/5766	65ns / 63.0	25169MBs /68.6

When you plug the memory you end up at 800 MHz and you have to increase it to 1200 to get the desired speeds. The memory can work at CL4 at DDR 2 800 speeds but you kind of want the biggest number rather then a best CL settings, at least when you buy this memory.

Once we got the memory stable at 1200 we begin to test. As FEAR is very graphically demanding game you get only limited performance increase from just the memory overclocking. The better numbers comes from combined overclocking of CPU, FSB and memory. In fear you will gain three FPS from faster memory and if you move from 1200 to 1280 you will gain an additional frame. Once you reach the top 1280 MHz you will gain one more frame.

in FSAA and Aniso score you can only see the noticeable difference at 1280x960 resolution and 1280 MHz settings. You will gain two frames.

Memory benchmarketeers believe in Super Pi scores. We have some nice ones. At 1 MB test all settings will end up at 17 seconds and that is a nice score. The difference starts to count at 8MB test where you have a few seconds difference between the settings. Kingston 1200 MHz settings is a single second faster than 1280. At most demanding and time consuming 32 MB test 1280 clearly wins and by six seconds.

Memory bandwidth grows with the speed. Sandra 2007 at 1280 scores the best score. It has the best memory latency that drops below 65 in both tests. Just for competition that is some 15 ns less than the DDR 2 800 score. Both cache and memory works best at 1280 MHz.

In Short
It is cheap, it overclocks without any effort at 1280 5-5-5-15 at 2.4 V. if you want to buy super fast memory you should starts considering Kingston. I think that OCZ and Corsair just got some nasty competition but as we can imagine these overclocking boys will go even higher.

The best that comes out of this memory is ability to overclock the Core 2 Duo to some cool speeds and overclock the bus and memory at same rates. This truly gives you performances easily even faster than thirty percent.

Welcome back Kingston.

The Good
Cheap for ultra fast memory
1280 MHz stable
Lifetime warranty
The Bad
works at this speed only at a few motherboards
The Ugly
Maybe you dislike the blue colour