The Verdict.
The numbers that we pull in our tests obviously don't say much to most of you. Reviewing memory is always a very difficult thing to do as every MHz you increase the FSB the CPU will rise also. Obviously you have noticed small differences here and there in performance. Memory like this is not cheap, but for what it offers versus the voltage levels I think this is kickass memory.
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ou can't deny that for the money these are two mighty impressive slices of memory. Most of you though will insert memory into your system and never look at it again. Fine, with this memory it'll run very aggressively and fast at default settings. The bonus however can be found for overclockers. I deliberately included gaming results with an increased FSB. It's the total overclock that matters. And to be able to overclock you must be certain that your memory can cope with that higher FSB. This memory is guaranteed up to a 533 (2x266) MHz giving you a lot of scalability for two slices of PC3200 memory. You do need to fool around with memory voltage and FSB though. If you are not comfortable with that then hey... don't.
Our test system limited us so we could not test that memory to its full capability at 533 MHz, we got stuck at 486-500 MHz. Surely that is close enough but still I would have loved to find this memory's limit. The results that we did get back from this system versus its memory are impressive though.
So it boils down to this, if you are going to overclock and need that extra head room then you are making a safe bet with Patriot PDC1G3200+XBLK memory. We were virtually bound by the limits of our test system as we just could not push the CPU any higher. The memory performed beautifully at very aggressive 2-2-2-5 timings and we pushed memory bandwidth towards ~5300 MB/sec. But that's where our system ran into severe limitations. It's not the memory that ran into limitations though. I bet that if I would have been able to cram some more voltage (our mainboard maxes out at 2.85v) the latency could be lower at a higher FSB. Since the Pentium 4 loves memory bandwidth it'll absolutely have an effect on overall performance. The same goes for gaming, you can see that titles like Doom 3 will benefit from this increase in memory bandwidth.
So enough about performance. The memory itself is well built, it has the nice flashy aluminum heat spreader and nice red design. It's very good stuff.
Backed up with a lifetime PDP warranty versus a reasonable price (for this specific type of memory), highly recommended.
Product: Patriot PDC1G3200+XBLK
Type: Memory DDR400 (2:2:2:5)
Manufacturer: Patriot Memory
Info: www.patriotmem.com
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