Patriot PDC22G10100ELK Sneak Peek

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, May 17, 2007, 02:30 PM EDT

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.

Tags: G1, Peek, Patriot, g10, 100e, sneak peek, 2G, EA, IoT, K

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com