Kingston Hyper-X3200: DDR400 With a Healthy Identity Crisis

Kingston has been providing the PC market with reliable, cost effective memory for some time. Their Hyper-X series has been a favorite of the Overclocking and Enthusiast communities, as well the average PC-user desiring a higher performance part. Since the introduction of the dual memory controller, especially Intel's Canterwood/Springdale chipsets, Hyper-X branded memory has been coveted among the overclocking genre.

Scanning through Enthusiast forums reveals Hyper-X to be a staple among the few brands able to meet the demands of this discriminating segment. The overclocking community in particular, is much more critical of their hardware then the perhaps any other. By definition overclockers seek only those products capable of far exceeding the manufacturer's specifications. Their devotion is not limited to any one brand, but to the best performer. In the memory market, this may change from one moment to the next.

When the I875 chipset was introduced, Kingston Hyper-X was manufactured with Winbond BH-5 IC's (Integrated Circuits). Since Winbond stopped production of these integrated circuits, tales of their existence have attained a somewhat Homeric mythological status. Samsung Semiconductor has given us DDR which comes very close to surpassing the performance of BH-5, running at CAS2 2-2-5 under several manufacturers' heat spreaders. The difference between Samsung, and Winbond DDR-IC's, is the latter can soak up voltages as high as 3.45V, and I've heard rumors this has increased. This allows the memory to run at very high frequencies, while maintaining very low latencies.

In the memory tested today, Kingston hasn't necessarily endeavored to recreate the performance found in its former BH-5 supplied Hyper-X. In fact, given the Overclocking community comprises a mere 5% to 11% of total memory sales, producing such a Low Latency memory in 2048MB kits, would also be mythological, but more along the “Homeric” Simpson, at least financially.