Kingston shows off PC2-6000 (750MHZ)

Enter PC2-6000 To The Market

Today Kingston showed off samples of their PC2-6000 memory, which is the fastest DDR2 memory that we have seen to date. For those that don’t know, PC2-6000 is running at 750MHz DDR2! The modules that we have are 256MB modules and carry the part number KHX6000D2/256. Under closer inspection they were found to be running a 32MB x 8 single sided configuration on a JEDEC reference PCB. As far as latency is concerned, they are rated at CL4 for 4-4-4-12 timings. Below is the first public image of the Kingston PC2-6000 memory.

Expect Kingston to officially launch the HyperX PC2-6000 modules in 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB configurations in the next two weeks. The reason Kingston hasn’t launched this product yet is because there is a lack of motherboards that can reach speeds of 750MHz on the memory. As of the writing of this article Kingston has only found one board so far that this memory is able to work on – The ASUS P5AD2-E Motherboard. Kingston has searched high and low for boards that support PC2-6000 because they won’t release a product for a single motherboard. (Imagine the Customer Service phone calls when people buy this on any board other than the ASUS P5AD2-E.) The ultra hyped ABIT Fatal1ty board does run “stable” at PC2-6000, but is right on the threshold of being “too close” to be called solid. If you want Kingston to launch DDR2 memory at 750MHz CL4 you’ll have to wait for it to be qualified and it has to pass on more than a single board for Kingston to launch a product.

The Future of DDR2 Memory:

Legit Reviews has been hitting over 800MHz internally, but it looks like Kingston has got us beat there now, too. Below is a slide from their recent power point presentation that talks about running DDR2 866MHz on the PC2-6000 memory shown above. With 1.95V they are able to achieve 866MHz speeds with 100% stability and have included a couple benchmarks to show off the memory performance. There is a super fast 7.2 GB per second throughput on Sisoft Sandra 2004 when run in dual channel with a 3:4 memory divider being used.

Nathan Kirsch’s Thoughts:

Kingston has been quiet on the PC enthusiast side of the market for a long time. It looks like Kingston just leapt ahead the competition in terms of raw clock speed. Unfortunately for the consumer the memory industry is ahead of the motherboard guys in terms of technological abilities. We had DDR2 memory months before we got the i915/i925 boards from Intel and ever since then memory has always stayed one step ahead of the chipsets/boards. When it comes to overclocking it becomes obvious that all DDR2 motherboards are not created equal, even if they use the same chipset. As always, Legit Reviews stresses the importance of building a solid platform around your wants and needs. Don’t expect to take the cheapest DDR2 motherboards you can find and expect to get PC2-6000 to work on it just because the memory is rated to run that. Kudos to Kingston for working on PC2-6000 memory and for letting the enthusiast community know that they are ready for faster memory. Now if we could just get a bunch of motherboards that support PC2-6000 and beyond!

Legit Bottom Line:

Kingston steps up to the plate and is ready to ship PC2-6000 once the market has boards that are ready.