Kingston’s FURY RAM brings auto overclocking to gamers

When Kingston released HyperX FURY memory last month at PAX East, they targeted it as a replacement for HyperX Blu, “for entry-level gamers and enthusiasts”. We really like Kingston memory and we have tested it many times at ABT. We received a 2x4GB evaluation kit from Kingston of their FURY 1866MHz DDR3 (HX318C10FWK2/8) that we will put through its paces for you. Although FURY comes in a choice of four colors, we picked white as they look great installed in any PC.

HyperX is the high-performance product division of Kingston Technology encompassing high-speed DDR3 memory, SSDs, USB Flash drives, and headsets. Kingston has 3 memory product lines: FURY, Genesis and Predator.  They offer a complete series of dual-channel kits available in frequencies ranging from 1333MHz to 2800MHz, and in various combinations from 8GB to 32GB.

This evaluation will test 2x4GB HyperX FURY memory versus Kingston’s fastest 2x4GB HyperX Predator RAM (KHX28C12T2K2/8X) at 2800MHz which we already compared with running it at the stock 1600MHz specification. We will also compare with 2x8GB of Kingston’s 2133MHz Beast RAM . Previously, testing Ivy Bridge with 2x8GB Kingston’s Beast RAM at 2133MHz brought limited gains in gaming, and only to a few games. Since we have topped out with our RAM clocks at 2400MHz with Ivy Bridge, we now only use the Haswell platform since its RAM can reach 2800MHz and beyond. We are benching with the Core i7-4770K at 4.0GHz which is approximately equal in performance to i7-3770K at 4.5GHz.

We are using the GTX 780 Ti, which is able to differentiate between CPUs at 1920×1080 resolution and above, without resorting to using multiple graphics cards.

HyperX FURY

HyperX FURY replaces the HyperX Blu memory line with the most obvious visual difference being FURY’s asymmetric heatspreader design. This new high-performance memory offers automatic overclocking. Auto overclocking means that the default speed is 1866MHz instead of the motherboard’s usual assignment of 1300MHz or 1600MHz. FURY does not need the user to optimize its settings in the BIOS as is usually necessary.

HyperX FURY memory is fully Plug and Play so it automatically overclocks to 1866MHz without assigning a profile in the BIOS manually . FURY’s new heatspreader design is available in four colors ( red,blue, black, and white) which sit on black PCB. Gamers, modders, and system builders can now choose memory color-matched systems. HyperX FURY is available in 1333MHz, 1600MHz and 1866MHz frequencies, and we are testing the 1866MHz variety at its stock speed.

HyperX FURY memory is available in 4GB and 8GB modules as well as 8GB and 16GB kits of two. It is backed by a lifetime warranty, free live technical support, and Kingston reliability where every module is pretested before shipping.

Price to Performance

8GB of Kingston FURY 1866MHz RAM is currently priced at $79.99 at Newegg with free shipping. 8GB of HyperX Blu starts at about the same price at Newegg for 1300/1600MHz RAM. In contrast, 8GB of Kingston Predator 2800MHz RAM will cost you $219 at Newegg, while 8GB of Beast 2133MHz RAM costs $110.99 ($153 for 16GB, as we tested). As you can see, there are a wide range of prices to match the increasing RAM speeds, and we will compare the performance of each of our 3 speed grades.

HyperX FURY Memory Features and Specifications:

• PnP: Plug and Play automatically overclocks the memory up to the system maximum specs
• Capacities: 4GB singles, 8GB singles, 8GB kit, 16GB kit
• Frequency*: 1333Mhz, 1600Mhz, 1866Mhz
• CAS Latency: 9, 10
• Voltage: 1.5V
• Heatspreader: Stylish and aggressive in blue/black/red/white
• PCB: Black
• Reliable: 100% tested
• Guaranteed: Lifetime warranty

*HyperX FURY Part Number Decoder: HX3xx= HyperX DDR3 + Frequency; Cxx= CAS Latency; Fx= Color Code; (optional) x or K2/x= Kit of 2/capacity

The specifications also look great and we can’t wait to test it.

The Benchmarks

We will emphasize ten games, including our eight newest games that are most sensitive to RAM speed changes. And we also 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 8GB Kingston FURY RAM at 1866MHz versus 16GB Predator RAM at 2133MHz and versus Kingston’s fastest 8GB Beast RAM at 2800MHz in game benchmarks at 1920×1200 and 2560×1600 resolutions and at the maximum details that gamers play at. We have broken with our tradition of using a GTX 680 to test the Kingston RAM with the rest of our benching suite of real world and synthetic tests, and we now use the GTX 780 Ti for all of our benching.

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