Kingston Genesis 4GB DDR3 2133MHz Review

Test Setup

For our testing today we’ll be using our standard P67 test rig, and comparing against our venerable P55 test bench. Firstly today’s system :

4GB Kingston Genesis 2133MHz Hyper-X X2 Grey Edition
MSI P67A-GD65
Intel Core i5-2500K
EVGA GTX570
Noctua NH-D14
Cougar CM1000 PSU
Windows 7 64 Bit

The P55 rig is identical excepting a Gigabyte P55 UD4 and Intel Core i7-870 in place of the LGA1155 parts.

For the memory we’ll be running against an identically spec’d Hyper-X T1 kit, running at 2133MHz, 9-11-9-27-1T and the G.Skill Trident at a whopping 2400MHz, 9-11-9-28-2T.

Overclocking

Playing about with the memory on the current Intel boards is both easy and frustrating depending upon your desired outcome. With the BCLK/FSB locked to 100MHz we no longer need to worry about multipliers and such, but can just pick our memory speed from a selection and it’s all done behind the scenes.

This is fine if you just want to plug and play, but when we’re seeking to extract further performance it becomes somewhat of an impossibility. Our MSI tops out at 2133MHz, which is this Kingston’s rated speed. So we can’t push it further via pure overclocking methods, but have to look at reducing timings.

Tightening the timings is always more touch and go than a slight increase in speed. If these chips were capable of CAS8 you can bet Kingston would be selling them as such.

It’s especially problematic that they are set to 1.65v by default, so we haven’t got any voltage tweaks available to us to eke that extra little performance out.

As it was, there isn’t any. 2133MHz @ 9-11-9-27 is the best that this kit will do. Even trying for 9-10-9-27 resulted in a failed POST and so, with a heavy heart tempered by the knowledge the Genesis is already rated very well for a £80 kit, we moved on to testing.