Kingston HyperX Predator RAM & Haswell at 2800MHz

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that running RAM at a faster faster clock speed produces performance gains and saves time in most common tasks, especially with multi-tasking but also including video encoding and decoding.

We also saw improvements in framerates with the Predator RAM clocked at 2800MHz over running at the stock 1600MHz. Should a gamer upgrade to premium fast RAM? Probably not from running at 1600MHz especially if overclocking is possible, but if a gamer is buying a new CPU and motherboard now, faster RAM can make a performance difference.

Kingston Predator HyperX PC2800- Pros and Cons

Pros

• The Kingston HyperX Predator RAM is very fast 2800MHz DDR3 that is built for high speeds. It is an enthusiast’s dream. Fast, stable, and dependable – it just works.
• It comes with a lifetime warranty along with great customer service and tech support.

Cons

• Costs. 8GB costs about as much or more than 16GB of standard 1600MHz RAM.
• High profile.  The Predator RAM has such a high profile it may not work well with all CPU heatsinks.

The Verdict

If you are an enthusiast with premium components who wishes to gain every last bit of performance out of your PC, then the Kingston HyperX Predator DDR3 at 2800MHz is an excellent choice. It is an especially good choice for Haswell as it brings real performance gains over using RAM at the stock 1600MHz.

The Kingston HyperX Predator RAM is priced the same as other premium DDR3 and it is backed by Kingston who gives a lifetime warranty and excellent support. We feel it deserves ABT’s Editor’s Choice Award.

However, if you are on a budget, you are more likely to spend less on faster RAM speeds and settle for 1600MHz RAM and perhaps try for an overclock. For gaming, 8GB is sufficient although for other tasks, 16GB might be preferable.

For ABT’s flagship Core i7-4770K PC, running everyday tasks and for most of our benchmarking, we have settled on using 16GB of Kingston HyperX BeastDDR3 which runs at 2133MHz. It is faster than the stock speeds of 1600MHz; it brings advantages of 16GB over 8GB, and the DIMMs are much lower profile than the Predator RAM which allows us to easily test more CPU coolers. For testing extreme overclocks or for extracting every bit of performance out of our Haswell platform, we will use the Predator RAM at 2800MHz.

We are looking forward to our next evaluation early next week which will feature the new GTX 750 Ti as a dedicated PhysX card when paired with a GTX 780 Ti or with GTX 680 SLI. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, make sure that you follow us on our ABT forum. You will get the very latest news about upcoming new graphics cards and we are making preparations to attend Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2014) in March.

Happy Gaming!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor