[morris_casey87]

I am running 64 bit vista and I figured it was time to up my ram capacity. I purchased 2x2 patriot extreme performace pc8500 as it is going really cheap right now and am waiting for its arrival: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220314. Thoughts on this memory? is it pretty good? can it overclock decently? What do yall think? I almost went with mushkins due to good reviews, but the price really jumped out for these. I will miss my ballistix tracers (legendary chips). Bought them when they were at their hight and have put them though hell and they are still rock solid as they can be.

 

[nathangentzen]

All i know is the only mushkins i've ever owned crapped out on me. I buy from newegg by rating now so i know it will never be a problem again.

i hear the OCZ reapers are really good for OC / general awesomeness. (heat sink, OCZ support, etc.)

 

[kimosabi]

I would say Go Corsair but you`ve already bought the sticks.

 

[grmnasasin0227]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nathangentzen All i know is the only mushkins i've ever owned crapped out on me. I buy from newegg by rating now so i know it will never be a problem again. i hear the OCZ reapers are really good for OC / general awesomeness. (heat sink, OCZ support, etc.)

Buying from Newegg simply by the rating on products is hardly ever a good idea, if you read the reviews many people write it is blatantly obvious that they are not very experienced with hardware and really don't know what they're talking about. Having a single piece of hardware die on you (especially RAM, it has the highest DOA rate of any component) isn't bad and doesn't mean terrible things about its company, it just means you happened to get a bad set which happened to be hundredths of a percent out of their production.
Viper is kind of the underdog in terms of RAM overclockability. G.Skill, Mushkin, and Corsair all do well for themselves, and OCZ deserves a mention, too. It's not like you bought crap, but you probably could have found better, the G.Skill 2x2GB 1066's are going for <$80, too.

 

[morris_casey87]

Right, I don't just go by the reviews of course, but I do read them to see if there are any issues with the product that I should be aware of by more advanced users, as I consider myself one. Reading through I can ususally pick those out to some degree for analysis. Going directly by the reviews is a bad idea yes, but completely looking passed them is also a bad idea. I also try to read reviews/posts here as well hence this post and I also look for benchmarks/other reviews etc before making any purchase. From googling around this seems to be decent ram, however for these purposes I am looking for input from people that have used this particular product or any Patriot product for that matter to weight in so I can kind of know what to expect performance/lifespan/etc wise.

If anyone has experience with this company or this particular ram, please let me know what you think of it and whether this was a decent choice for the price.

thanks!

edit: these are not the viper, they are the extreme performance PC8500..

 

[morris_casey87]

Just wanted to comment here, I just got the memory, installed, changed settings in bios and pc booted up no probs, been running P95 to stress it to make sure it will last and its been going fine. the only issue I have with this memory over my trusty old ballistix is that at 1066 mhz (cpu OCd to 3.4ghz) I cannot tighten the timings to 5-4-4-12 like I could with the ballistix...I have settled with 5-5-5-12. Also the only way I can OC the memory at a 425mhz fsb is if I jump straight from 1066 to like 1275 mhz (asus board, no unlocked divider), which most likely would not work, so I don't really plan to OC. Aside from the above, so far so good..

I am running these at stock 2.1v...would upping the ram voltage slightly allow me to tighten the timings? I was running the ballistix at 2.15 (stock 2.2v) which is .05 v over the patriot memory I have here.

 

[18 is # 1]

That's a shame. I woulkd have liked to see how high they go. Glad they're working for you though.