Kingston 2GB PC2-6400 CL3
By Rob Williams
August 22, 2007

DDR3 might be lurking out there, but DDR2 is still the most popular option for most people, and for good reason. It's fast, and currently, very inexpensive. Although there are many PC2-6400 kits available, Kingston puts a twist on their's by offering it with tight 3-3-3 timings.

Since DDR3's launch this past May, things have died down a bit on the DDR2 front. This past January, Corsair released fast PC2-10000 ram, which is basically touching the DDR2 ceiling, at least right now. Other companies topped that kit after it's release, but Corsair's is the only one I've ever seen on sale (and it still is today).

The sad fact is, DDR2 only became popular for most people in May 2006 with the launch of AMD's AM2 platform, and it seemed to have been ousted as soon as it was becoming truly popular. So we have the DDR3 launch, and all is fine and good. Except that it happens to be expensive as heck. Not many people really want to pay $500 for a 2GB kit, so as far as that's concerned, DDR2 is still king.

Add to that, I have not really seen a real-world scenario where DDR3 has an advantage. MHz for MHz, power consumption is lower, but the slight increase in your power bill will likely be overshadowed by the $300 premium you are paying for the ram to begin with. Now that my DDR3 rant is out of the way, let's get right to the review of Kingston's latest DDR2 kit, the HyperX 2GB PC2-6400 CL3.

Tech Gage
complete article

I'm probably defending here seeing as I've recently committed to DDR3 to "future proof" a new system I'm in the process of building. I will hopefully collect a 2 GB kit of Corsair TWIN3X2048-1333C9DHX G RAM I ordered in the next day or two. It was crazy expensive at around US$ 675-00. It sure hurts to pay that just for RAM

Price aside, DDR3 has come under, what is in my opinion, unwarranted criticism. From the outset it has complied with JEDEC standards across the MHz range which it's available in. Yes, it's slower with latency timings like 9-9-9-24 and higher but the speed at which it operates (the highest I've seen is up to 1800 MHz but there must be higher than that), more than compensates for the higher latencies, I think. Besides that though, there just isn't a way to run a current system without having to use it. It also presents the opportunity to run the Intel 45nm CPU's when they become available sometime next year.