Kingston HyperX Predator DDR4-3000 16-GB Kit Review

Reviews
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

The X99 platform is already pretty expensive. Does a 16GB quad-channel kit of DDR4-3000 memory really need to cost more than $400? Kingston takes on our previous DDR4-3000 test sample with its newer, lower-priced HyperX Predator.

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Program Performance And Value Analysis

Codemasters continues to present excellent games for memory testing in its racing series. Simply find a setting that doesn’t put much stress on the CPU or GPU (which is easy with high-end parts), and watch as memory bandwidth and latency become the deciding factor.

While G.Skill’s high-end parts are noticeably faster in Grid 2, the difference only becomes noticeable looking at an average frame rate chart. I don't know anyone who can see 228 compared to 235FPS, even when halving frame rates via a stereoscopic display.

Battlefield 4 scales more typically compared to current games, and gains nothing from faster RAM.

Because a single-second difference can show up as the result of milliseconds and rounding, we really need a two-second difference in applications to define performance superiority. Lacking that, we’re ready to move on to overall performance and pricing.

G.Skill’s Ripjaws 4 are true premium parts with a truly-premium $450 price tag. Kingston hopes to woo value seekers by presenting the same data rate and capacity in a $370 kit. We think the company is on to something.

Update 1-09-2015

A recent price drop for G.Skill's F4-3000C15Q-16GRR has made it available for $350 at Newegg. This puts it on-par with Kingston's $330 HX430C15PB2K4/16 in terms of both performance and overclocking value. As always, we suggest readers search current pricing before making their final purchase decisions.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • exroofer
    Your benchmarks compare the DDR4 ram to other DDR4 ram.
    Is there a way for you to give us any kind of number comparing it to fast DDR3 CL9 ram? I know you can't do apples to apples benchmarking, but some idea of the performance increase, if any. would be more helpful I would think.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    15011569 said:
    Your benchmarks compare the DDR4 ram to other DDR4 ram.
    Is there a way for you to give us any kind of number comparing it to fast DDR3 CL9 ram? I know you can't do apples to apples benchmarking, but some idea of the performance increase, if any. would be more helpful I would think.
    Due to the different CPU, the only thing you can really compare to DDR3 articles is Sandra Memory Bandwidth. It's lower for DDR4, even when set to similar timings at the same frequencies. This is mostly due to longer secondary and tertiary timings, it appears, and will only be solved as DDR4 continues to get faster and lower-latency versions.

    Reply
  • Crashman
    Pricing update at the end of the article. Expect more pricing volatility by the end of this month.
    Reply
  • TerryFawkes
    Again, DDR3 to DDR4 gaming comparison is what everybody wants.

    Fudge the CPUs then (down-clock if needed), get as similar CPUs as possible, or use two high end CPUs that make the two systems GPU bound hence making the difference in CPUs irrelevant.

    I'm beginning to get this feeling that there is no performance improvement between DDR3 and DDR4, and that there might even be a performance decrease in DDR4 when it comes to gaming because of the crappy DDR4 latency. And I think that because of this, sites that receive a DDR4 sample to test are told not to test against DDR3 (or no sample for you!)

    Sooner or later, somebody will do this test, and we'll then learn the truth which the ddr4 manufacturers don't want us to know.


    Reply
  • Eggz
    @TerryFawkes

    Linus already did it. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utWnjA4NzSA

    He just disabled come of the cores on an X99 chip and clocked them the same. Not 100% identical, but very (very) close.
    Reply
  • g-unit1111
    That is one gigantic heat sink on those RAM chips. I'm taking it conventional cooling won't work with those heat sinks as tall as they are?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    15015814 said:
    That is one gigantic heat sink on those RAM chips. I'm taking it conventional cooling won't work with those heat sinks as tall as they are?
    too many factors to consider (whether the inner slots will be filled, how close the closest-filled slot is, etc. But for huge coolers that overlap the DIMMs, no.

    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    well this is why you don't adopt to the new gen ram as soon as it comes out because of the high cost and high latency.
    Reply
  • Hupiscratch
    It's amazing to see how fast these things became. I'm still using a PC with DDR 516 that gets only to about 2.3 GB/s. I think my head will blow when I finally buy a new PC.
    Reply
  • jazzy663
    I have to admit, when I first looked at that it almost looked like laptop memory.
    Reply