Kingston HyperX DDR2-900 2GB Dual Channel kit

Review: Kingston HyperX DDR2-900 KHX7200D2K2/2G
Reviewer: Sean Kalinich
Product cost: $395.00
Manufacturer: Kingston
Spelling and Grammatical Editors: Sean May and Ian King

Introduction:
Kingston has been a frequent flier in our labs here at Planetx64.com; we have had everything form high-end DDR to SODIMMs. Every product we have evaluated has been very high quality and performed very well in our tests.

Today we have Kingston’s KHX7200D2K2/2G kits on our test bench this is 2GB of fast HyperX DDR2-900 memory. We will see if this kit measures up to Kingston’s proven level of performance.

Packaging: 4.25 out of 5

Design and Features: 4.25 out of 5The packaging for the KHX7200D2K2/2G kit is the usual packaging from Kingston. This is a sturdy plastic casing that protects the RAM quite well from incidental damage that may occur during shipping.
Inside the package is a small leaflet that has basic installation instructions, Warranty and RMA information and a small listing of other products offered by Kingston. One nice touch for the newcomer to the DIY market is the bold letters instructing the consumer to visit Kingston’s support site at Kingston.com/support before installation.
Although some may ignore this, it is still nice to see the attempt.

The 2GB DDR2-900 HyperX kit is designed the same as all of the HyperX line. It consists of 2 240 pin DDR2 modules. Each module has 16 64M x8-bit DDR2 FBGA components and are tested to run at 900MHz with timings of 5-5-5-15 at only 2.0 volts, these are relatively fast timings for DDR2 running at this speed and is roughly comprable to DDR500. SPD (serial presence device) timings are DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 at 1.8V.
The standard HyperX royal blue heat spreader can also be found on the KHX7200D2K2/2G kit. These do an admirable job of keeping the KHX7200 modules cool and provide an attractive look to the modules.

Test systems:
Intel Extreme Edition 840 CPU
Asus P5WD2 Premium Mainboard
2 GB Kingston HyperX KHX7200D2K2 (2 x 1GB)
3x Hitachi T7K250 160GB SATA 2 3.0GB HDD (RAID 5)
Leadtek PH7800GTX TDH 256MB
Antec Titan Server Case with True Power 2 550Watt PSU
Generic 16x DVD-ROM
Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition (All updates and service packs as of 2/18/06)
The following software was also installed on both systems to provide accurate “real world” testing.
Microsoft Office
SpeedFan
Fraps
Avast! AntiVirus (freeware version)
Diskeeper 10 (Demo)
Java Runtime 1.4.2_10

Performance: 4.35 out of 5
The Kingston HyperX DDR2-900 was tested at both SPD (DDR2-667) and at DDR2-900; the second speed required overclocking the XE840 CPU. As the Asus P5WD2 Premium only allows the RAM to be manually set up to DDR2-800.

Sisoft Sandra:
I used Sandra to get a good feel for where the KHX7200D2K2 kit stands in relation to other types of RAM on different chipsets, although the numbers are on the generic side. Sandra still gives us a rough estimate of where the KH72002K2 stands in the food chain.

Memtach:

Memtach is another synthetic benchmark that is intended to show the bandwidth potential of a give piece or set of RAM. We can see the expected performance increase from the SPD settings to the RAMs intended speed.

RightMark Memory Analyzer:

RightMark Memory Analyzer is an interesting application. It seems to be an all inclusive memory testing suite with CPUz thrown in for good measure.
The tests I chose were:
Memory Bandwidth
Memory Walk
Decode Bandwidth
Stream
Checksum
Substring Search
Each of these is intended test a different function of RAM performance.
Grpahs are in the same order as listed above

SuperPi:
I decided to include SuperPi due to an observation on how the Pi calculation times varied with different types and speeds of RAM. This seemed to be independent of the CPU speed, although the CPU speed still played a part; I noticed that just increasing the RAM speed also yielded faster Calculation times. In this case the overall improvement was less than I expected only 7.5% in XP x64 and 9% in XP Professional with a roughly 25% increase in memory speed.

 SuperPi 4M Test

 Time is in Minutes and Seconds (lower is Better)

Battle Field 2:
Battle Field 2 is another test I have only recently decided to add into the memory testing. Battle Field 2 is very memory hungry; running it with less than 1GB of RAM on most systems can yield very poor performance. This test was to see if memory speed also assisted in the overall performance of the game.
For this test I used the Daqing Oilfield Map with a resolution of 1600×1200@ 85Hz with all settings on maximum. All test were performed using FRAPS 2.7

 Battle Field 2 Average Frame Rate

Frames Per Sceond (Higher is Better)

Interestingly the only place we see proof of a performance improvement is in XP x64. This may be due to the more efficient 64bit memory addressing used. Granted a 4FPS difference is nothing to write home about, the over all feel of the game was smoother with the HyperX than with other DDR2 RAM that I have used.

Price/Warranty: 4.65 out of 5
Price:
The KHX7200D2K2/ 2G Kit retails for $395.00 direct from Kingston yet can also be found for as low as $344.99 (onsale.com). This is a good price for this speed and capacity of RAM. Competitors’ offerings come in at around the same price for slower speeds and in one case coming in considerably higher.

Warranty:
The KHX7200D2K2/2G kit has a lifetime warranty as do all Kingston Memory products.
RMA, if needed, can be started by visiting Kingston’s site. once there you simply follow the onscreen instructions.

Conclusion:
So is the Kingston KHX7200D2K2 /2G kit worth your hard earned money? In my opinion it absolutely is. With good performance even at SPD speeds the KHX7200D2K2 brings improved responsiveness and performance especially in today’s heavy multi-tasking computing environment. In a 64Bit computing environment the performance gain is even more noticeable, with the speed of XP x64, as a whole, being much more responsive even with multiple applications running. Whether you are a current Intel system owner or are considering an AM2 CPU from AMD in the near futures the Kingston KHX7200D2K2 /2G kit is something that should be at the top of your list for your system.

Pros:
Fast
Large Capacity
Efficient Heat Spreader
Price (priced similar to slower RAM)
Lifetime Warranty
Customer Support (Friendly and Helpful)

Cons:
No Mainboards with native support

Scores:
Packaging: 4.25 out of 5
Design and Features: 4.25 out of 5
Performance: 4.35 out of 5
Price/Warranty: 4.65 out of 5
Final Score: 17.5 out of 20

 With the performance price and capcity of the Kingston KHX7200D2K2/ 2G Kit we are proud to award it our Best on the Planet Award.