G.SKILL DDR3-2133 4GB Memory Kit Review

Enthusiasts and overclockers are always looking for the components that can provide the most bang for the buck. An inexpensive processor can often be carefully tweaked to yield performance that's superior to a more expensive version. Likewise, many video cards can realize substantial performance improvements with manual adjustment of the voltage and clocks on the card. With memory, however, there's typically much less headroom: your DDR3-1333 memory may not run reliably at 1600MHz, even with looser timings. If you want really fast memory, you're going to have to pay for it. Benchmark Reviews has run tests on a number of high-speed memory kits from the likes of Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Patriot, OCZ, and others, and these reviews offer a wealth of information you can use to educate yourself on the subject.

G.SKILL is a relatively recent entry into the high-end memory market, and they're going up against established brands like Corsair, Mushkin, and Crucial in a very competitive marketplace. They're arguably more focused, though, since their only products are memory (desktop and laptop memory, as well as SSDs).

Computer memory is somewhat of a commodity these days: memory modules with a given specification will perform pretty much identically with other modules with similar specifications. How will G.SKILL distinguish their product from others in the market? We'll see in the following pages.

Although the memory controller built into Intel's Socket 1156 processors only supports DDR3-1333 speeds officially, any enthusiast knows that there's more than a bit of overclocking headroom there. DDR3-1600 memory is increasingly common, and recently a number of memory vendors have upped the ante even more, with DDR3-2000 and higher speeds becoming available. G.SKILL has entered the enthusiast memory market with a broad selection of high-speed and low-latency memory kits, and Benchmark Reviews tests their new DDR3-2133 memory kit (F3-17066CL7D-4GBPIS) to see what kind of performance benefits it will yield when overclocked.

Manufacturer: G.SKILL
Product Name: DDR3-2133 (PC3 17066) 4G memory kit
Model Number: F3-17066CL7D-4GBPIS
Price As Tested: $174.99

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by G.SKILL.

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