Kingston HyperX Predator 8GB 2666MHz Review
Conclusion
Published: 28th September 2012 | Source: Kingston | Price: £120 |
Conclusion
There are two clear conclusions from today's testing.
The first, and most obvious, is that the Kingston HyperX Predator 2666MHz 8GB kit is quite a performance beast. Not only is it a very good looking set of memory, resplendent in its Kingston blue heatspreaders, but it gives incredibly consistent results throughout our testing.
Given the 2666MHz speed at CAS11, and the fact that the 2400MHz profile is also rated at CAS11, we thought we were being pretty ambitious in trying to squeeze some lower timings out of it. Yet we either have an extraordinary bit of fortune in the silicon lottery (in which case we'll buy a Euro Millions for tonight) or Kingston have been very conservative with their estimates. Without adjusting any voltages at all, with the DIMM naturally remaining at its 1.65v setting, we were able to drop the XMP timings from 11-14-14-30-2T down to 10-12-12-30-1T. That's an excellent improvement in performance for the barest minimum of work.
The second thing is less about the Kingston, and more general proof about the eternal battle between low timings and a fast MegaHertz rating. The only kit that came close to the Predator was the G.Skill Trident which was tested at 2400MHz CAS 10. In nearly every test it was equal to the Predator, and it was only when handling a huge amount of calculations in wPrime95 and CineBench that the Kingston Predator was able to eke ahead.
That does leave us in a bit of a bind when it comes to deciding what to award the Predator though. It's priced at around £120 for this 8GB 2666MHz setup, which is a lot of money given the low price of memory these days, but its actually very well priced for an 8GB 2666 kit when compared to the other brands. So on the one hand you're getting the fastest kit we've tested here at OC3D. Yet on the other you might be better served by going for a slower kit from an array of choices in the Predator range. Finally we do have to knock it slightly for the height of the heatspreader which, if you go for a larger four-stick package will cause problems under either the Silver Arrow, NHD-14 or similar sized CPU heatsinks, if you are running an inclosed water loop or even fully fledged watercooling as these are getting increasing popular then you wont have any problems other than what to look at!
The performance at both stock and lowered timings cannot be overlooked, its on par with other similar kits price wise and it does look the business too, so we're going to award the Kingston HyperX Predator our OC3D Gold award.
Thanks to Kingston for supplying the HyperX Predator 8GB 2666MHz kit for review. Discuss it in the OC3D Forums.
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With the quest for faster memory accelerating, we take a look at the Predator from Kingston, running at 2666MHz.
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