Kingston HyperX Predator RAM & Haswell at 2800MHz

This evaluation will continue to test the Socket 1155 Haswell Intel platform using 2x4GB of Kingston HyperX Predator RAM (KHX28C12T2K2/8X). We have been using the Predator premium RAM that we received from Kingston for a couple of months, and we want to share our experiences with it at 2800MHz, compared with running it at the stock 1600MHz.

Previously, testing Ivy Bridge with Kingston’s Beast RAM at 2133MHz brought limited gains in gaming, and only to a few games. Since we have topped out our RAM clocks with Ivy Bridge at 2400MHz, we will only use the Haswell platform since its RAM can reach 2800MHz and beyond. We are benching with the Core i7-4770K at 4.2GHz which is about ten percent faster than i7-3770K at the same clocks.

Beast (left) and Predator (right)

We will be able to compare, by extension somewhat, the performance of our Ivy Bridge system at 4.20Ghz with the same GTX 680 which compared Kingston HyperX “Beast” RAM at 2133MHz versus at 1600MHz. However, this time we have a faster CPU and a faster video card, the GTX 780 Ti, which is able to differentiate between CPUs at 1920×1080 resolution and above, without resorting to using multiple graphics cards.

In this evaluation, we shall focus on 2x4GB of superfast Kingston’s Hyper-X Predator RAM at speeds of 2800MHz while using a Kingston 240GB HyperX SSD for benching. We want to see if it is worth it for an enthusiast gamer to spend $229 at Newegg for 8GB of premium HyperX Predator RAM PC3-22400 (2800MHz) which is generally more expensive than 16GB of 1600MHz DDR3. However, it does boast some pretty high specifications from Kingston’s web site:

Features

• Capacities 8GB–16GB (with 8GB and 16GB kits)
• Speeds up to 2800MHz
• 1.5V & 1.65 V operating voltages enable stable overclocking
• Intel XMP Ready; optimized performance settings handpicked and tested by Kingston engineers
• Dual Channel kit tailored for P55, H67, P67, Z68, H61, Z77, and Z78 Intel chipsets; as well as A75, A87, A88, A89, A78, and E35 (Fusion) AMD chipsets
• Exceptional clock and latency timing specifications to enhance overall system performance
• Heat sink design achieves effective maintenance of speed while prolonging the memory lifecycle
• 100% factory tested
• Lifetime warranty

Kingston uses some very large heatsinks to dissipate the heat of the overvolted Predator DDR3 at such high speeds. These high-profile 54mm DIMMS are built for speed and for even more extreme overclocking.

The Benchmarks

We will test ten games, including our eight newest games. And we shall benchmark using synthetic and real world tests. We are benching using the fastest single-GPU videocard, the GTX 780 Ti, to give you a comparison of the Kingston RAM at 1600MHz versus at 2800MHz in game benchmarks at 1920×1200 and 2560×1600 resolutions and at the maximum details that gamers play at. We are using the GTX 680 to test the Kingston RAM using the rest of our benching suite to maintain consistency with ABT’s benching for the past two years.

Issues with System RAM and Overclocking

The ECS Golden Series Z87H3-A2X is ECS’ premium enthusiast motherboard and it has allowed us to stably overclock our Core i7-4770K to 4.5GHz, although we have been using 4.2GHz for all of our current testing.

When setting CPU overclocks it is usually recommended to move the RAM speeds to default, 1600MHz, or lower. However, we found no stability difference either way, and we kept our Kingston HyperX Predator DDR3 at its rather extreme XMP Profile 1 default 2800MHz clocks for our overclocked benching.

Before we head over to our test configuration and benchmarking, let’s open the package.