Product Application:

 PC2-9600 DDR2

Product Provided by:

 Patriot

Available at:

 Newegg

Memory MSRP:

$269.99

Availability:

Now

Review by:

 Paul

Edited by:

 Scott

Review date:

 August 12th, 2007

 
 

 

Packaging and Installation

     The memory comes in the standard plastic bubble packaging.  Nothing fancy, but it serves its purpose.

     The Patriot PC2-9600 features the standard black aluminum heat spreaders that are on most of Patriot's memory.  It's nice to see a set of memory sticks able to achieve high speeds without the use of extreme heat spreaders or exotic cooling apparatus'.

Testing and Overclocking 

     For this review we'll be using an eVGA nForce 680i motherboard which is based on nvidia's 680i chipset. The CPU will be ran at 400MHz (1600Q).  Here is a basic rundown of the test system:

Hardware Model
Motherboard: eVGA nforce 680i SLI
CPU Intel C2D E6400
Video Card eVGA 8800GTS 320
Storage Seagate 400GB SATA
Optical Lite-On 16X DVD+/-RW with Lightscribe
Memory Patriot PC2-9600ELK
Cooling Corsair Nautilus 500 Water cooling kit

     According to Patriot's website, it's safe to run the memory at 2.3v.  For overclocking, I used 2.35v.  This is the maximum safe voltage to run and not void the warranty.  You can overclock this memory a couple of ways, manually or using the EPP settings.

EPP and SLI-Ready Memory Explained

     The EPP feature only works with "SLI-Ready" memory. The SLI-Ready Memory setting in the bios is, in my opinion, for the inexperienced, and/or to quickly setup the memory bus speed settings. It identifies the memory and correctly sets the memory bus speed.  It does not change anything else, including memory timings. Not to knock the EPP feature, but EPP is not a magical setting that will automatically overclock memory or lower memory timings below factory recommendations. SLI-Ready memory will work with just about any non EPP motherboard and you do not need SLI-Ready memory to run in a SLI motherboard. EPP and SLI-Ready memory is only an enhancement feature.  I decided to set the BIOS to expert and manually configure the memory.

Results

     While I didn't expect the memory to overclock very much, I was able to get a little more out of it.  I was able to push the memory to 1244MHz.  I was impressed with the memory's ability to overclock, while keeping the memory at its default timings of 5-5-5-12.  This provided a nice little boost in performance.