Kingston vs OCZ DDR2-800MHz Memory

Conclusions & Value

The Kingston HyperX 2GB memory is inevitably cheaper compared to OCZ FlexXLC, because it not only has had less heatsink development and material use, but the OCZ has faster stock timings. However despite faster timings doing more for memory speed than raw bandwidth with Intel Core 2's, it doesn't seem to make a noticeable difference, and it's only going to save you roughly £20.

Compared to the Corsair Dominator PC6400 CAS-4, the OCZ is a fraction more expensive (at the time of writing), but depending on where you shop there's very little in it. The variation between online stores is usually greater than that of the difference between directly competing memory modules.

Just searching our own shopping site, some equivalent 2GB Geil CAS-5 "Certified for ATI CrossFire" Value memory will only set you back £110, saving some £40 over the cheapest Kingston HyperX 2GB. They are both CAS-5 and bare heat spreaders, so is the £40 saving worth it considering the difference on paper and looks between modules is not that much? The 2GB Kingston CAS-5 DIMMs can be set to 4-3-3-12, which is very good, and there’s always the stigma of buying Value memory.

If you're interested in investing in Vista any time before your next upgrade cycle, then 2GB is the minimum worth considering, but 1GB will still suit many people who are content with XP and occasionally gaming. At around £80 it's pretty well priced for a low latency module kit, but just finding DDR2-800 low latency 1GB kits seems to only yield limited options anyway. You can go for the more popular Value CAS-5 and save a little bit, but the market isn't as competitive as the 2GB kits. If you're looking for a low-mid range upgrade it's definitely worth looking into as the memory does do extremely fast 3-3-3-9 timings.

It's hard to justify the more expensive memory considering the tests we've shown - does simply better looking memory warrant the extra cost? Well there’s no doubt the OCZ looks fantastic in a case, providing you have a means of seeing them. You’d think it was secretly stealing the prints right off your fingers considering how easily the surface picks them up. The extra fins do keep the modules much cooler than the Kingston when you crank up the voltage, but this makes it all the more difficult to understand the need for integrating watercooling.

Many more Europeans have watercooling based around low flow, small bore setups, so they are more likely to easily integrate the watercooling option into their loops. On the other side of the Atlantic however, there is a preference for larger bore (3/8" or 1/2") setups, so integrating this into a loop means reduction adapters and considerably more effort.

With motherboards like the AMD RD600 and NVIDIA 6-series chipsets providing many memory ratios, this makes the need for high performance memory almost moot when overclocking. Even when setting the CPU and Memory to sync still leaves plenty of headroom for the majority of people with DDR2-800 who are looking at moderate overclocks.

Final Thoughts...

Despite the fact the Kingston HyperX performs very well and is only £80, 1GB of memory shouldn't really now be an upgrade choice. If you already have 1GB of memory installed in your system then installing two more sticks to make four will result in a performance penalty unless they are at least DDR2-800 CAS-4.

When 2GB branded value DDR2-800 is only £110-120 at the moment, and with many more games and Vista requiring in excess of 1GB of memory, it's extremely difficult to recommend it as a purchasing option considering the real world performance difference. Even value memory is only CAS-5 and should do CAS-4 with a push. The 2GB Kingston is twice the price and is ordinary CAS-5, which is essentially very much the same branded Value RAM. Maybe the Kingston HyperX will do slightly faster timings, but it won't offer any noticable performance increase.

Kingston HyperX KHX6400D2LLK2/1G

Kingston HyperX KHX6400D2K2/2G

The OCZ FlexXLC PC 6400 CAS-4 looks fantastic, but to some its looks may seem somewhat over the top. It may look fancy but this 140g RAM oozes quality (it's over 3.5x heavier than a stick of Kingston) and this is the only factory-fitted watercooled memory available. The fact that it works perfectly well air-cooled is a welcome bonus, as watercooling is still a relatively niche pursuit. It's relatively low latency and provides a decent overclock which means it performs slightly better in synthetic benchmarks. Unfortunately these gains are not mirrored in our real world test results, and after all this it's still more expensive than much of the market.

OCZ FlexXLC PC2 6400 (OCZ2FX800C42GK)