PDP Systems Patriot PDC1G3200+XBLK DDR Memory Review

There's somewhat of a shootout going on in the high-end memory world, with several companies attempting to grab a share of the enthusiast memory market. Corsair, Mushkin, OCZ, Crucial, PDP and all the rest are forced to compete on a level playing field, since memory technology has been pretty much stagnant for the last few years. With no technological advantage to be had, it's all about quality, value, and overclockability.

Recently we've reviewed several excellent dual-channel memory kits by the major manufacturers, and found them to be uniformly high quality, which is good news for the consumer. There's always room for one more memory review though!

In this article, PCstats will be evaluating one of PDP System's newest Patriot Dual-channel DDR memory kits, the PDC1G3200+XBLK; really rolls off the tongue doesn't it? Jokes about the name aside (and really, every memory manufacturer these days seems to use unnecessarily long strings of numbers and letters to name their products), this is a pretty impressive looking kit, promising decent overclockability right on the label!

PDP Systems PDC1G3200+ XBLK

According to the PDP Systems the pair of 512MB PC3200 DDR memory modules included in the PDC1G3200+XBLK kit are capable of 2-2-2-5 memory timings at their stock 200MHz speed, and can run up to 266MHz at a loose 3-4-4-8 timing. It's nice of PDP to tell us what to expect right on the packaging! We'll see how the memory measures up to these numbers in a little while. The PDC1G3200+XBLK kit is not PDP System's highest performing Patriot memory kit, but it occupies a nice middle ground between performance and price.

Like most DDR modules PCstats' has reviewed recently, these PDP Patriot PDC1G3200+XBLK sticks are equipped with aluminium heat spreaders, which mainly protect the individual memory chips from physical damage. Here they are a snazzy go-faster red, which might bode well for overclocking... As the PDC1G3200+XBLK modules use conventional TSOP-II packaging, we were able to pry the heatspreaders off and have a look underneath.

Each of the two memory modules in the kit is composed of 64 64Mbit DRAM chips, giving a total of 512MB of memory on each stick. The memory chips are Samsung K4H560838F-TCCD chips. The memory modules themselves come with a lifetime warranty from PDP Systems.