Kingston HyperX PC-9200 2GB Memory Review

Overclocking and Final Thoughts

The RAM was brought to stock timings, and the front side bus was slowly brought up, until we hit its limit with the current cooling and rough ambient temperatures. On this set of RAM, the maximum stable front side bus speed was 1166 MHz from 1066 MHz. While not a massive boost, and only just above the rated speed of the RAM, the ability to unlock the bus between RAM and processor allows this boost in RAM throughput while still allowing the processor to be pushed much further. It should be reminded that this RAM has no exotic cooling, and with a stock, simple heat spreader with no water-cooling, no liquid nitrogen, the RAM reached this speed without incident. In order to show the change, the Everest results were repeated, but with the new speeds reported.

The bandwidth change is quite noticeable, beating out even the Crucial from the previous tests. Write speeds were similar, but the boost in bus speed helped the read speeds tremendously. The most noticeable change, however, was in the latency test. I posted all the latency results in order to show the drastic change.

This change is amazing, and shows that a small change in clock speed can reap excellent results. Adding to this an overclock of the processor should yield excellent results in both synthetic, as well as real world games, and in general performance of your computer.

Final Thoughts

While there is faster RAM on the market, such as the higher rated Kingston HyperX9600, the 9200 still provides excellent performance, though I do have reservations. The Kingston was constantly bested in latency, and throughput benchmarks by the Crucial RAM. With such a small margin between them though, the market is still wide open. The difference in price between the two sets is small, about ten dollars, in favor of the crucial. The crucial provides LED indicators for this cheaper price, though if you do not like bling, then the Kingston is still an excellent choice, proving itself stable, and still very fast at various timings. However, these reservations are not without a counterpoint. If you take the leap, and overclock this RAM, the performance increase is immediate, and will reap rewards worth the risk. This alone helps in pushing the RAM into worthy territory, and despite the lack of beauty, this blue beast can beat out the rest once you let it loose.

Legit Bottom Line:Kingston extends their line of dominance, giving good performance for a decent price, letting the overclockers enjoy the preformance boost, and giving the rest of the world something worthwhile.