Patriot PDC22G10100ELK Sneak Peek

We recently got the chance to evaluate a new, super-fast DDR2 memory kit and wanted to share some of the finer details with you here.  If you're a regular reader of HotHardware and follow the PC hardware scene, you know that companies like Corsair and OCZ are constantly pushing the performance envelope and offer memory kits that'll operate well beyond the "officially" supported specifications of every chipset currently on the market.  Up to this point the fastest memory we had ever tested was Corsair's Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF. This Corsair kit is rated for operation at 1250MHz with 5-5-5-18 timings at 2.4v, which is extremely fast by today's standards.

Patriot Memory, however, is about to one-up Corsair with their upcoming PDC22G10100ELK PC2-10100 memory kit.  Patriot's PDC22G10100ELK kit consists of a matched pair of 1GB modules (2GB total), rated for operation at 1262.5MHz with 5-5-5-18 timings at 2.3v.  At these settings, that make the PDC22G10100ELK kit a touch faster than Corsair's current flagship, but representatives from Patriot say they'll be able to deliver this memory kit at a $350 - $400 price point, which will make them considerably more affordable than some other premium kits.

We installed the Patriot PDC22G10100ELK kit into an EVGA nForce 680i SLI motherboard, powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor, and manually set the memory timings to their recommended specifications. We hit a memory speed of 1262MHz by dropping our CPU's multiplier to 7x and raising the FSB to 1684MHz (421MHz quad-pumped) with the memory and FSB ratio linked via the motherboard's BIOS. The end result was a CPU clock speed of 2947MHz. At these settings, the Patriot kit broke the 8.2GB/s mark in SANDRA XI SP1’s memory bandwidth benchmark and it scored 7,086 in PCMark05.