Kingston HyperX PC3500 2x256MB

Author: Antti Valkeinen Published: 27.10.2003 Manufacturer: Kingston Product group: Memory

It's time for some testing. What I'm going to test here is overclockability and performance differences with various memory speeds and latencies.

Tests

Overclocking test are driven on few different voltages: 2.8V, 3.0V and 3.3V. I do not find point to test overclockability on default voltage since it almost all modern motherboard allow at least moderate voltage adjustments and there really isn't any reason to drive overclocking test at default voltages. Test bed is based on P4-system, which is somewhat harder for memory than AMD-based system. (And I do not have AMD motherboard capable of doing over 250Mhz)

OC

At tight latencies (2-2-2-5) HyperX seems to need quite high voltages. Raising voltage from 2.8V to 3.3V seems to the trick and speed gain is mighty 42MHz. 250MHz at very low latencies is somewhat unique. Very slow latency settings didn't help much. Although at 2.8V difference between tight and slow latency settings is 17MHz it goes down to 4Mhz at 3.3V. It is very likely that my motherboard is limiting factor here.

HyperX PC3500 memory modules from Kingston are likely most overclockable low latency modules out there. Too bad that I had only BH-5 based modules to test because I haven't heard very good news about newer CH-5 based modules. So I'm going to recommend that if you are looking for very overclockable memory you either look for Kingston HyperX PC3500, which are labelled as "2.5V" or some other memory, which uses Winbond BH-5 chips. (Very hard to find)

Performance Tests

Since biggest question nowadays is performance difference between low latency PC3200-PC3500 memories and high latency PC3700-4200 memories, performance test are driven in various latency settings.

I drove performance test at three different processor speeds: 2.4GHz (12x200MHz), 2.8GHz (12x233MHz) and 3GHz (12x250MHz). Three different latency settings were also used: 2-2-2-5, 2-3-3-7(SPD) and 2.5-4-4-8. In addition to that I also included 2.4GHz (12x200MHz) result "PAT" on and 3GHz (12x250MHz) result using 5:4 memory multiplier (memory at 200Mhz).

SiSoft Sandra 2004

SiSoft Sandra 2004's unbuffered and unoptimized memory test show us just raw memory performance. Performance graph tells that running memory modules at 200MHz with low latencies (2-2-2-5) is just as fast as running memories at 250Mhz with slow latencies (2.5-4-4-8). Also if you are running processor at 12x250Mhz using memory multiplier of 5:4 and low latencies you can achieve just as good memory performance than using expensive slow latency PC4000 ram.

P4 is very memory dependent and low latency memory gets most out of it. Considering memory performance it's better to keep latencies low than seek for maximum speed. PAT feature seems also kick ass and if you have motherboard capable of it, try to keep it on.

WinRAR 3.10

Compressing files with WinRAR 3.10 is extremely memory dependent and so on good for measuring memory performance. What we can see here is that again low latencies seem much better that slow. Running processor 2.4GHz and memories 2-2-2-5 with "PAT" on system seems to beat 3GHz P4 with its memories running 250MHz (2.5-4-4-8) by 10%. That is something that I haven't encountered ever before. Performance gain just using "PAT" is enormous.

It seems again that using 5:4 memory multiplier instead of slow latencies is better choice.

Quake 3

Quake 3 is old game and not suitable for example testing video cards. But it seems to scale very well considering CPU and especially memory performance. The thing here is again 5:4 memory multiplier and tight memory settings. I think it is better to forget very expensive PC4000&PC4200 memories and try to search for memory, which can do at least 200MHz 2-2-2-5. Best choice of course is to find memory capable of doing over 250MHz 2-2-2-5 like these Kingston HyperX PC3500 modules do.

Conclusion

Kingston HyperX PC3500 2x256MB   + Performance + Reasonable pricing + Overclockability + Great packaging - Well.. where to find these with BH-5 chips?

Kingston HyperX PC3500 modules are absolutely brilliant memory. Considering that you can get memory that is capable to 250MHz 2-2-2-5, you just cannot pass these. Of course there are some drawbacks and most problematic of them is that new PC3500 modules have different memory chips. And then there is that problem that overclocking these modules need very high voltages, which void your warranty and can be unhealthy for memory modules. But if you are going to be extreme, you need extreme memory and Kingston HyperX PC3500's filled with Winbond BH-5 chips are just that. If you are looking for just good memory Kingston HyperX PC3500 is right memory again. Rated at 217Mhz 2-3-3-7, it is very likely that they will do 200MHz 2-2-2-5 and like performance figures showed us, on some applications, that can boost your system performance quite a lot. These memory modules truly deserve our Editor's Choice award. Only problem is that HyperX PC3500 modules on the store shelves are quite different than these. We just have to hope that they will perform similar or better. (Although I heard that there is still some HyperX PC3000 memory modules with BH-5 chips available, so you just might want to get them instead of PC3500.)

Additional information

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