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GeIL 2GB DDR2 800MHz Black Dragon kit

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Breaking ranks with convention may be the norm for indie developers, but it's a rare occurrence for hardware manufacturers.

When said conventions exist to tempt 'enthusiasts' it's a particularly risky move - making GeIL's decision to buck the trend with its Black Dragon memory so surprising.

Basic package

Not only do these sticks refrain from employing lots of ridiculous superlatives in their name, but (and this is shocking) it boasts absolutely no water-cooling connectors, heat pipes or even heat spreaders.

Naked, as it were. Admittedly a pair of LEDs are used for the dragon's eyes, but even these are fairly subtle.

Don't let the lack of a cooler fool you into thinking these sticks can't deliver either - in fact they're some of the fastest 800Mhz memory we've seen.

The 4-4-4-12 latency timings at 800Mhz offer up an overall memory latency in Sandra of 80ns with a throughput of 6.6GB/s (compared to 88ns and 6.4GB/s from a pair of OCZ's excellent ReaperX).

Decent value

In practical terms you're looking at adding at least a couple of frames to the likes of Crysis and Half Life 2, and possibly a lot more if you're using more mundane memory.

At £42 a pair, these offer reasonable value, but grab the 4GB kit for a shade over £60 and you're laughing.

Geil Orange Dragon DDR2-800MHz

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Look at that. Less than £70 for 4GB of RAM.

And as much as we love the technical geekery that makes DDR3 better than DDR2, this configuration outperformed the higher bandwidth rig in several key tests.

The conclusion is very clear: four gigabytes is the price/performance sweet spot, regardless of the speed rating.

A less sophisticated memory option

The orange heatsink is very old-school in its lack of sophistication, and although the timings are slightly slower than those of the Reaper-X at 4-4-4, the two set-ups were neck and neck in the tests.

The cash saving isn't enormous, but if you're on a budget and don't plan to overclock your memory, there's no shame opting for this brightly coloured competitor.

G.Skill DDR2 1,066MHz

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The only reason to go for 2GB is that either you're strapped for cash or you're upgrading an existing machine. In which case this kit of twin modules is for you.

With quoted timings of 5-5-5-15, it was a relief to find these functioning just fine in the same system at the full 8,500MB/s bandwidth.

That said, the extra RAM speed it has on some of its peers made very little difference.

Stable solution

The G.Skill spreaders aren't as snazzy as many of their competitors, but are up to the job unless you're going in for a ludicrous overclock.

Right now they provide stability if you're overclocking a rig where the FSB:Memory speed ratio is locked (ie. an Intel chipset), but for a new build 4GB of PC2-6400 will fare you just as well for games.

OCZ Reaper-X DDR2-800MHz

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OCZ's Reaper-X is designed to draw heat directly from the memory chips, rather than just around them. Instead of active fans, though, this relies on a ferocious looking radiator.

This is all well and good, but it does make fitting the modules a bit of a bugger. You can't push down on the radiators without breaking them, and getting to the module underneath involves losing knuckle skin.

A strong performer

Performance-wise, though, they do the job well.

The memory ran cooler than most of its peers and overclocked to 1,066MHz without any issues. Lots of guarantees also protect your extra investment, making the extra spend worthwhile.

Patriot Viper Fin DDR3 1,866MHz

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This memory is rated for faster speeds than the Corsair Dominator, but lower voltages and memory.

We suspect that, underneath the steel Mohicans, the chips are identical, since not many vendors produce these high performance chips.

As good as the competition?

Is the difference merely cosmetic then? For £80 less the Patriot heatsink is by no means as sophisticated as the DHX spreader, and you don't get the fan included, but it does bring the price down to something approaching reasonable.

The difference in performance is close enough not to warrant worrying about at 1,800MHz.

The key definer is that the Dominator provided a bit more stability when pushed to 2GHz, so if you're looking for the best of the best, that's it.

Corsair Dominator DDR3 1,800MHz

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The Dominator RAM prides itself on being hand-picked and tested from the number one bins, while the DHX heatspreader uses two differently conductive materials to take heat directly from the chips and PCB before expelling it into a set of fans.

Once, this could have been considered extreme. With DDR3 running at these speeds it's almost a necessity.

Faster than the competition

Timings of 7-7-7-20 are tight for any speed of DDR3, and give it the edge over some rival sticks - but not by much.

The main differences between this and DDR2 are in the theoretical tests, where latency and throughput are faster by over 10 per cent. In practical tests the quantity has the edge.

The dream rig would involve 4GB of this stuff, but it'd be pricey.

Corsair Dominator DDR2 1,066MHz

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It's a sign of just how far prices for DDR2 have fallen that Corsair's once prohibitively priced Dominator RAM is available for less than £100.

Given the overclocking potential of Core 2 and Phenom chips, though, there's a convincing argument for stretching to buy the famous DHX heatspreader.

Disappointing performance

Unfortunately, we ran into problems with the Dominator from the off.

Even without the FSB cranked up for a comparable test platform to the 4GB kits, we couldn't hit the quoted 1,066MHz speeds at 5-5-5-15. The best we could manage was 900MHz.

Even if this was just a curiosity of our mobo, the main conclusion stands: four gigabytes of slower RAM outperforms two gigabytes of performance stuff like this in all our practical tests.

Lexar ExpressCard SSD 4GB

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This 34mm ExpressCard slots into an available slot on your laptop and adds 4GB of storage space. As the card hides completely away, it can be installed and left as a backup for your files. To make this easier, Lexar has installed No TouchBackup, which can automatically back up your system to a schedule that suits you - even daily if needs be.

When it comes to transferring data, it's not as quick as having an external mechanical hard drive installed as Flash can't write as quickly. We managed to copy 1GB of files in 2 minutes and 15 seconds, which is relatively slow.

The capacity of the card is good value for money and the everyday functions it offers makes this a great back-up tool for the frequent traveller. As capacities grow and the cost of such cards drops, such devices will become as important to mobile users as their USB memory keys.

Corsair 2GB DDR3 TwinX

tech.co.uk staff — 1188255600

Corsair is clearly a member of the school of thought that says larger heat spreader equals faster memory. And, despite the fact they only have standard timings, these sticks of RAM boast bigger coolers than other manufacturers' efforts.

This has been achieved by extending the cooler above the usually cramped memory slot area. Although this does afford the sticks with better cooling, DDR3 requires less power than its predecessor so this shouldn't be as much of a problem as it previously was.

When tested in operation, the XMS memory is surprisingly unexciting. The 9-9-9-24 timings are thoroughly standard, producing figures pretty much as expected.

As you'd expect, there is plenty of room for overclocking, but with the timings so high anyway, how far you can push these memory sticks is defined by the other components in your system. On the plus side, these sticks are tumbling in price, and they could soon offer much better value for money.

Kingston KHX11000 D3LLK/2G

tech.co.uk staff — 1188255600

Kingston was one of the first manufacturers to push DDR3 sticks out of its doors, indicating that it's serious about making a name for itself with the new standard.

As if to back this up, the company has also launched this memory under its KHX brand, and labelled these sticks with competitive memory timings (7-7-7-20).

There is some confusion here, though, because despite adhering to the PC3-11000 standard (aka DDR3 1333), these sticks actually have the SPD configured to operate at 1066MHz. So plug these sticks into your motherboard and elect to go for automatic settings, and the memory bus won't operate quite as quickly as you'd imagine.

However, if you increase the memory bus to 1333MHz, the performance is much more impressive, producing an impressive bandwidth score. It's a shame the SPD doesn't report the correct figures, as many users may miss this trick and end up with sub-optimal performance.