Introduction

Update: Following this reviews publication, we were informed by Corsair that they have already had an 1800MHz XMP-ready 2GB kit available on the market for a year or so. Not only this, but their modules are rated with a latency of C7 whilst the Kingston modules are C8.

We apologise for not having realised this prior to this reviews uptime but felt it needed to be mentioned not only with respect to Corsair but also for our readers who we like to ensure are never misinformed.

Kingston is one of the big wigs when it comes to producing memory modules. Kingston HyperX memory modules have made some impressive strides; the DDR2 modules are amongst the highest quality out there. And with DDR3 showing clock frequencies up to the 2000MHz range now, Kingston is on the front line of clock power.

Intel has decided to move into the high performance market with its XMP or Extreme Memory Profile technology on their X38 and X48 chipsets, a derivative of the NVIDIA Extreme Performance Profiles. Basically, how this works is the memory is rated to do either 1600MHz or 1800MHz on an X38 or X48 chipset. The XMP data is written onto a separate EEPROM chip on the memory with improved timing data, voltage requirements and settings. When you select a XMP Profile, the modules tell the motherboards memory controller what latencies, voltage and bus speed to run at; the rest is history.

Today Kingston enters the XMP market with the highest clocked XMP kit we have seen thus far, that being 1800MHz. Let's see how it compares to our OCZ XMP 1600 modules.