4GB DDR3 Memory Roundup - Part 2

Value and Conclusions

For £150 the Elixir is brand new low power technology that is targeting the performance mainstream market rather than enthusiasts specifically, but we expect you'll see these chips sold by Nanya/Elixir and used in other enthusiast products in due course.

Our "enthusiast" exposure to the Elixir parts will most likely be in terms of the ICs within other brands, and when bought in huge batches by brands like Corsair and OCZ etc, they should drive the price down from a still significant £150. However, because they'll almost always be covered by heatspreaders we have to point out be aware that future product revisions of current products or Core i7 triple channel kits might include these and they don't overclock half as far as the Samsung ICs.

If you are specifically after low power, low heat and low profile modules then keep an eye out in December when they become available. We respect there is a market for these DIMMs over concerns of latency and overclocking performance, and for those with X48 DDR3 boards will probably find the overclock fits nicely.

Having said that though, the 12 to 24 month warranty will likely turn a lot of buyers off and we expect that these will mostly end up in performance OEM machines. Directly compared to the ~£120 non-EPP Corsair 1,600MHz C9 memory we reviewed last time, it has far less performance potential and costs more to boot.

The Patriot Viper series on the other hand is a generally excellent performer, but we found its stable overclock is more limited than the direct competition - the G.Skill GT1s - as it is already stressing the Samsung HFC0s harder because they are rated to 2.0V rather than 1.9V. This is likely a consequence of either the matt black PCB on the Viper versus the G.Skill's plain-green, or simply that Patriot hasn't got enough good Samsung ICs.

Kudos go to the Viper heatspreaders/shields for trying something a little different and they are far more compatible and quieter than the oversized Thermaltake 'wares. However, whether you prefer them to the equivalent G.Skill Pi-series heatsinks is entirely down to personal taste.

EPP2 in our opinion is overrated - it does make it a lot easier to overclock the system to its rated 1,800MHz speeds, however it sets the memory to unlinked in the nForce 790i Ultra SLI (this is a BIOS "feature" though uncontrolled by Patriot) which means that all that performance gain is mostly negated. The nForce chipset also overclocks better in Sync mode, but it does stress the CPU far more.

When we dropped in our E8500 dual core for the maximum overclock possible, we found the Patriot Viper would actually exceed the previous top-performance of the other products we've looked at, although it's only 5MHz faster than the G.Skill GT1s at 2,005MHz, and we had to resort to using a massive 2.2V to get it mostly stable for any length of time. With a lifetime warranty, some might say, "who cares if you kill it?", although the inconvenience of RMAing dead memory is at best, undesirable.

In terms of value, the Patriot Viper PC3-14400 matches the OCZ memory at the same frequency and latency, but features smaller XTC heatspreaders although it does run at 1.9V instead of the Patriot's 2.0V. The G.Skill GT1s cost a little less when we don't consider rebates, and compared to OCZ Reaper HPC and Corsair Dominators they're appreciably good value.

The high performance DDR3 we have looked at is faster than the 1,066MHz DDR2, but it's still harder to justify the marginal extra performance for the large extra cost, especially when we consider the cost of X48 and nForce 790i Ultra SLI boards as well. If you are after that fringe extra percent though, the Patriot memory will probably be on your list just like the G.Skill Pi series or equivalent OCZs, but generally speaking Corsair's Dominator memory is often a lot more expensive. We'd still recommend the awesome value Corsair 1,600MHz C9 without EPP, providing that is, Corsair keeps outfitting it with Samsung HCF0 DRAMs.

Final Thoughts

All in all, the Elixir is a unique, low power, low profile performance solution but its pitiful 12 to 24 month warranty and inability to overclock that far means the Corsair from Part One of this round up is a better value product.

The Patriot Viper memory, on the other hand, is certainly great performing and good looking, but the Viper heat "shields" are not technically as excellent as other solutions. What's more, the higher rated voltage means it struggles at the extreme fringes, unless that is, you're really prepared to throw a lot of cool air and voltage into it which is covered by a lifetime warranty anyway - the good thing is that although its rated voltage is high, it boots at up to 1,600MHz with just 1.65V, meaning that it'll be fine in an X58-based system.

Elixir M2FG64CB8HA4N-DG

• Performance
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• -
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• 7/10

• Features
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• -
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• 8/10

• Value
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• -
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• 8/10

• Overall
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• -
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• 7/10

Patriot Viper Series PC3-14400 4GB kit

• Performance
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• x
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• -
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• 8/10

• Features
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• -
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• 7/10

• Value
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• -
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• x
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• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Addendum 24th November 2008: The Patriot Viper PC3-14400 memory is currently available for just £176.19! Compared to OCZ and G.Skill, that's a £50 lower price for the same spec performance modules.