Patriot G2 Series PC3-12800 8GB Kit Review

Patriot drop the speed and the price down a bit, but still offer us an 8GB kit. Is this one kit P67 users should be looking at?

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Manufacturer: Patriot
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Patriot G2 Series PC3-12800 8GB Kit Review 01



We've had a look at a fair few kits of memory over the last few weeks, but we've got more now, and today we're checking out another kit from Patriot. This one's a little different to the other kits we've looked at, as it carries with it the lowest clock we've tested to date on the P67 platform.

Don't confuse low speed with bad memory, though, as it's extremely obvious that not everyone out there wants to buy 2133MHz DDR kits. Dropping the speed down also helps drop the price down, and when you're looking at 8GB of memory that's not always a bad thing.

The RAM itself is part of the G2 (or Gamer) series, and from the moment you look at the kit it's obvious it doesn't have the same flair as the Viper Series which I personally think has one of, if not the best quality heatsink on the market.

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This kit carries with it quite a low profile heatsink; it actually doesn't go above the PCB of the memory, so people with massive coolers will appreciate the design. The lack of fanciness also helps keep price down which is of course important to those struggling gamers who just want to bust heads and not their wallets.

The PC3-12800 speed is the lowest we've tested on the P67 platform, and translates to only 1600MHz DDR. This is a good chunk away from 2133MHz DDR kits we've tested and no doubt that's going to be something you'll put into consideration when deciding what you purchase.

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While the kit might be lower clocked, it doesn't carry with it these super aggressive timings either with a 9-9-9-24-1T @ 1.65v setup. The focus around the G2 series isn't so much extreme performance in the way we see it from the Viper series, but more about good performance at a great price.

Getting everything up and running was a breeze, which came as no surprise and you can see our CPU-Z validation here. With everything up and running as it was supposed to, it was time to get in and see just what kind of performance we could achieve with the kit.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 18,364 MB/s / 17,507 MB/s, Copy speed of 21,255 MB/s and latency of 47.9ns. Looking at SiSoftware Sandra, our memory bandwidth numbers are 21,000 MB/s for Integer and 21,000 MB/s for Float.

The numbers aren't a shock at all; yes, they're lower than a lot of the other kits we've looked at, if not the lowest, but they're the lowest speed, so it's not a surprise and ultimately it would be a bit silly to think that a 1600MHz DDR kit would out perform a 2133MHz DDR kit.

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What you do get with these lower clocked kits is more often than not a bit more overclocking headroom. With a new 2600k in the testbed that has shown some excellent OC potential, we managed to get to 107.5 BCLK. This pushed our RAM up to 1720MHz DDR or a 120MHz DDR overclock, which is pretty impressive at the same 9-9-9-24-1T timings.




You can see our CPU-Z validation here. With that overclock achieved it was time to see what kind of performance boost we managed to achieve.

Under AIDA64 we ended up with Read / Write numbers of 19,857 MB/s / 18,858MB/s, Copy speed of 22,751 MB/s and latency of 44.2ns. Looking at SiSoftware Sandra, our memory bandwidth numbers are 22,640 MB/s for Integer and 22,660 MB/s for Float.

Across the board we managed to get a nice little bump in speed. Since everything was going along so well, it was time to change our CPU multiplier to 45 while leaving the BCLK at 107.5.What we ended up with was just over 4.8GHz and the same memory speed as above - 1720MHz DDR.

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Once we were in Windows we fired up AIDA64 and you can see our Read / Write numbers are 21,055 MB/s / 23,838 MB/s. You can also see our improved copy time and latency.

This is a really great kit of memory and is going to appeal to the masses due to the $102.99 price tag over at Newegg. At the moment, though, and 'till the 28th of February, a $20 rebate is offered via a prepaid card, bringing the actual price down to $82.99.

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Unlike some of the 8GB 2000MHz DDR kits we've tested, 1600MHz DDR is an official number supported in the BIOS, which makes setting them up an absolute breeze.

Sure, the timings are a little more relaxed than some of the other kits we've looked at, but the price is very aggressive considering it's an 8GB kit and the performance is great with some good overclocking potential.

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Shawn takes care of all of our video card reviews. From 2009, Shawn is also taking care of our memory reviews, and from May 2011, Shawn also takes care of our CPU, chipset and motherboard reviews. As of December 2011, Shawn is based out of Taipei, Taiwan.

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