Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Real World Benchmarks, Value And Recommendations
Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 edges out Kingston’s DDR4-3000 across Grid 2, likely in part reflecting its ability to support ever-so-slightly tighter latencies.
A miniscule 0.4FPS represents the entire range of Battlefield 4 results I’ve seen in all of my DDR4 tests, owing mostly to its graphics card dependence. That still represents recent high-end AAA games more accurately, though. While performance difference can occasionally be attributed to other parts of the machine, I usually remember to disregard deltas this small.
Similarly, our timed benchmark can vary by a few thousandths of a second per run, which causes the number of seconds to round differently. These benchmarks are somewhat bandwidth-sensitive, but not to the extent that this can be revealed in such closely-matched configurations. When no two-second differences exist, I generally find these to be a buffer in the overall performance charts.
To this point, we’ve seen Corsair’s Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 kit beat Kingston’s DDR4-3000 in tests from overclocking to gaming. That means a lot from a kit that’s given a lower-rated frequency by its producer. But these two are close enough that the cheaper parts will win.
Here’s where we see the other benefit of Corsair’s lower frequency rating. Without the fancy sinks and sensors on the company's highest-priced models, consumers expect to pay less for Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 than they would for HyperX Predator DDR4-3000. Corsair obliges, with an almost-affordable price of $325 (compared to the Predator’s $370).
Afterthought: Google Shopping appears to be taking on Bing’s “decision engine” concept, showing the parts it thinks you should want rather than the parts you’re actually searching for, after entering part number CMK16GX4M4A2666C15R. We found these for $325 at Newegg.
