Conclusion
Although it's the top performer in today’s comparison, Geil’s lack of U.S. availability makes it impossible to include in any value comparison, which obviously requires that we consider a price tag. That leaves Crucial’s middle-of-the-pack Ballstix DDR3-2000 as the highest-priced competitor in today’s roundup.
At the other end of the pricing scale, PNY shoots for best-value consideration with its low-cost DDR3-1333. It takes a lot of confidence to put mainstream parts up against such highly-rated competitors. Does that confidence pay off in a value win? We compared the maximum bandwidth of each module set to PNY’s reference-speed bandwidth (17.68 MB/s at DDR3-1333 CAS 9-9-9-24), then compared the price of each module set to PNY’s Web-price ($85). Dividing the first calculation by the second gives us value as performance-per-dollar.
Unfortunately for PNY, its low price isn’t enough to put it over-the-top when its maximum bandwidth exceeded its reference bandwidth by 18.8%. Kingston’s moderate price and high overclocking capability instead put it in the lead. Though we’ve always been a little shy about purchasing CAS 9 memory in hopes of achieving loftier overclocking results, Kingston’s margin of victory is large enough to earn its KHX1600C9D3T1K2/8GX kit one of our rare awards.
Though it didn’t reach the same DDR3-2133 frequency or DDR3-1866 CAS 8 timings, Corsair’s second-place Vengeance memory kit is even cheaper than Kingston’s HyperX T1. Futhermore, both products achieved similar timings at DDR3-1600. That makes Corsair a worthy adversary and an excellent alternative for buyers who wish to maximize performance at a moderate data rate.
