G.Skill PI or HyperX ?

G

Ghost26

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 18, 2009
Messages
110
Hi guys.

It's finally this week that I decide which RAM I'll be buying.

Now it's between G.Skill PI PC2-6400 and Kingston HyperX PC2-8500. I would buy 2 kits for a total of 8 GB

Both are at the same price. Newegg "seems" to have HyperX in stock.... I hope they will still have this kit in stock tomorrow...

Anyways, here is a little summary of both kits :

Kingston is 1066
G.Skill is 800

Kingston runs at 2.2v
G.Skill runs at 1.8v

Both has a good heatspreader, but there is a little advantage to the G.Skill.

Both has the same bandwidth at the same clock speeds.

Reliability and Kingston's legendary stability or lower voltage and heat ( and easier to manage for the northbridge ) of G.SKill ?

Note that I plan to overclock my CPU on a 450x9 bus configuration to eventually hit the 4 GHz. The G.Skill can overclock to 450 MHz without any problem.

My motherboard : Asus Technologies Motherboard: Asus Maximus Formula / Intel X38 Express Chipset / ICH9R Southbridge / Intel 45nm Processors Ready

What's your point of view ??? Here is a review comparing the HyperX and the G.Skill : http://www.bigbruin.com/2008/gskillpi6400_5

Thank you very much.

Ghost.26
 
I've tried both, and both are winners to me. However i couldn't get the PI to run 1066 while my current hyper X runs at 1066. The PI run much much cooler than the hyper X. I stayed with hyper X since it was given to me :)
 
Thank you for your advices !

I'm in Canada, so your 55$ means here almost 70 $ CND ;)

Sincerely I really don't know which one to get ! XD Someone I know had problem with the PK series. I'm sure it's only a bad luck and it can happens once in a while.

115 $ For the PK, 100 $ for the PI Series.

When I'll be overclocking, isn't simpler to have a 1:1 ratio and overclock the RAM to reach a 450 MHz bus speed ? I don't want to buy 1066 MHZ RAM and have to underclock them because of the ratios... Can someone explain this to me please ?

Thank you
 
I love the G.Skill PI blacks, and they are cheap!! I am currently running 3 sets (2 in my Vista x64 rig, 1 in my dual core gaming system) of the 4GB DDR2-800 and they are more than enough to overclock any Core 2 chip unless you plan to just go nuts. They look good, have great timings and are an overall excellent deal at $50. I run them in DFI P35 and P45 boards with zero issues. I always manually set timings and voltage, it's a good idea.
 
Ghost26 said:
When I'll be overclocking, isn't simpler to have a 1:1 ratio and overclock the RAM to reach a 450 MHz bus speed ? I don't want to buy 1066 MHZ RAM and have to underclock them because of the ratios... Can someone explain this to me please ?
Click to expand...

Yeah - I think the reason you might want 1066 is in case you get a quad later with a lower multiplier, or something. not a big deal though, I'd just go with the PI blacks.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 800 and 1066 are the same ram, just one is spec'd higher.

I look for lower timings with low voltage, if you can find DDR2 800 with 4-4-4-12 at 1.8V that might be the best performance for you.
 
I have the PI Black and love them. I have mine overclocked to 934mhz on 2.0v to make my E8400 go to 4.2ghz 24/7. I know they are stable higher than that as well. I am sure you can push them to around 1000mhz with 2.1v.
 
Thank you for your replies.

I currently have a E8400 CPU. I plan to overclock it to 4 GHz using a 450x9.

Rekd0514, are you using one or two kits ?

Can I expect a lower overclock using 4 sticks on my Maximus Formula ? DDR2-900 MHz would be just fine for me.
 
I am only running on set of 2x2gb, which is plenty for me since I am still not using a 64bit OS yet.
 
I really can't decide myself on which kit to get...

G.Skill PI 800 overclocked to 900 using 1:1 ratio, lowest voltage possible, best heatsink and immediate shipping.
or
G.Skill PK 1066 using another ratio to hit the 1800 MHz FSB, 2.1v instead of 1.8-1.9v and Newegg shipping which seems longer for purchases in Canada.

Newegg doesn't have any more Kingston in stock... they never get the HyperX in sotck for more than 1 day.
 
I ordered a set of gskill pi also from newegg right before the price went up.

edit: Actually the price went back down again lol. Must have changed it back.
 
Im in the exact same boat as you atm, but in Australia :).

I've narrowed it down from about 4 brands (Team, OCZ, Kingston and G.Skill) to aim for G.Skill BUT my next decision is do I go for the PI-Black 800MHz or the PI-Black 1066MHz?

I currently have a E8400 and Asus P5Q Pro - stock, no OC. But am looking to overclock to 3.6GHz as SO many people have told me its easy and safe to do.

Should I go for the extra headroom and get the 1066MHz or stick with the 800MHz.. Also does the 4-4-4-12 on the 800MHz have that much difference to the 5-5-5-12 on the 1066MHz?
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
They are power chips binned very tightly and neither will scale very well with voltage and wont oc much if at all. It's hard to find good 2gb ddr2 sticks now days.
Click to expand...

So the PI blacks are better OCers, or is that just cause they're 800 instead of 1066?
 
i have 2x2gb g.skill 1066 sticks (light blue sinks) and they will do ALMOST 1100. and i also have 2x2gb g.skill PI 1100 sticks (silverish PI sinks and they will do 1150 so far, havent tryed higher.
 
oMek said:
i have 2x2gb g.skill 1066 sticks (light blue sinks) and they will do ALMOST 1100. and i also have 2x2gb g.skill PI 1100 sticks (silverish PI sinks and they will do 1150 so far, havent tryed higher.
Click to expand...

So G.Skill kicks ass is what you're saying? :)

I got the light blue 1066 sticks, but haven't done my build yet.
 
Varmint said:
So G.Skill kicks ass is what you're saying? :)

I got the light blue 1066 sticks, but haven't done my build yet.
Click to expand...

ehh depends how you look at it, my old 800 D9s did 1100 untill they died.. so a 50mhz overclock on the ram was not what i was usetoo but its all i needed so win/win.
 
oMek said:
i have 2x2gb g.skill 1066 sticks (light blue sinks) and they will do ALMOST 1100. and i also have 2x2gb g.skill PI 1100 sticks (silverish PI sinks and they will do 1150 so far, havent tryed higher.
Click to expand...

I hear really good things about those 1100mhz pi's with the white heatspreader but that was a couple of months ago.

The black 800mhz pi's from what I hear struggle at much over 900mhz at 5-5-5-15 even. Like I said those black pi's have powerchip ICs and don't overclock very well. It's hard to find good ddr2 now days and when you do it's still not cheap. Im not sure about the kingstons but if I had to guess based on the specs I would say that they are powerchips as well.

If you do decide on chips with powerchip ICs make sure that they are binned to run 1066 so you have some headroom when overclocking. Those ICs are binned very tightly and don't respond well to voltage.
 
oMek said:
ehh depends how you look at it, my old 800 D9s did 1100 untill they died.. so a 50mhz overclock on the ram was not what i was usetoo but its all i needed so win/win.
Click to expand...

Well they're all 800mHz chips, just some are rated for 1066, right?

It does seem like they aren't making much progress on DRAM speed these days.
 
You say the 1066MHz PI-Blacks don't overclock that well, but say I'm just using them in a E8400 system which I want to overclock to 3.6GHz or 4GHz - only requiring max 900MHz, are these chips the most appropriate at doing the task well?
 
VenomousDesigns said:
You say the 1066MHz PI-Blacks don't overclock that well, but say I'm just using them in a E8400 system which I want to overclock to 3.6GHz or 4GHz - only requiring max 900MHz, are these chips the most appropriate at doing the task well?
Click to expand...

Even the 800 mHz PI blacks should do 900 mHz easily.
 
I have the 800mhz and they are plenty for OCing the E8400. I think they would be stable up to around 1000mhz at 2.1v. I have had mine to 956mhz for 4.3ghz and they were still running fine. I have mine lowered though as I run 4.2ghz as my 24/7 OC.

You should be able to get 3.6ghz with no effort on the P5q Pro. I was able to do it without changing the stock vcore voltage at all even at 3.8ghz. I needed only ~1.29v vcore to get to 4.0ghz with a few other setting changes.
 
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