3DVelocity would like to thank Overclock.co.uk and especially Pete for their help and courtesy in providing this memory for review.

Testing :

First up I figured I'd run both the Kingmax and a stick of Crucial though SiSoft Sandra's memory benchmark. Both are rated at CAS 2.5 though both ran quite happily at CAS 2.0 throughout.

Test System :

Abit KG7-RAID Motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
Radeon 64DDR VIVO Retail
Maxtor 20GB ATA100

 

Crucial

Kingmax

This surprising result repeated time after time. I say surprising because much as I was expecting decent results from the Kingmax, I wasn't really expecting any substantial difference between the two under Sandra. Next a look at the timings.

Crucial Timings

Kingmax Timings

Looking at the memory timings, it certainly appears that Kingmax have the edge. Clearly rated at 7.0ns, this should allow for a quite impressive 143MHz (1000 / 7 = 142.86) without straining.

Particle Fury

	Crucial	Kingmax
Average	974KP/s	977KP/s
Peak	986 KP/s	991 KP/s

Particle fury is a simple benchmark that renders 32,000 particles onto the screen at once. Because it doesn't come close to approaching the fill rate limitations of your graphics card, the results are almost entirely memory related. Again we see the Crucial fall behind, though not by a huge margin.

Overclocking :

Both the Crucial and the Kingmax topped out at an identical 150x10 (1500) at 2.80V which suggests I need to play with motherboard's timings to separate the two, but that's a project for another day. What perhaps matters is the difference between the two when benchmarked at this speed :

3DMark 2001 - 1024x768 - 32bit colour

Crucial	Kingmax
3488	3509

BUT! :

I was originally supplied with 2 x 128MB and try as I might there was no way I could get them to operate together. Either stick would work just fine alone, but trying to get them to cooperate in the same system was just not happening. Having spoken to the guys at Overclock it appeared they were also having a similar problem in another system whereby fitting a pair of 128MB sticks was leading to problems. At present I have no idea why this is the case, or whether it applies only to 128MB stick or whether all Kingmax modules suffer the same problems when paired up. It may even be related to certain chipsets or be a bad batch but I'll be sure to update this review when I get more info on the problem. Although most of us will buy memory as a single stick, this could be a real fly in the ointment for those who already own Kingmax DDR but want to increase capacity by adding another. Once I'd installed a single 256MB stick, everything worked like a charm.

Conclusion :

An incredibly competent performance from a memory manufacturer who despite being one of the big names in the Taiwanese manufacturing sector, have yet to make it big in the PC enthusiast market. Manufacturing, engineering and quality controlling the product entirely on-site gives Kingmax the same kind of edge that Crucial possesses allowing rapid response to changes in the needs of the market.

I can't say one way or the other if this stick of Kingmax is as able as Crucial in the overclocking department as I'm fairly certain it was board limitations that held me back and not memory performance, but I have heard stories of both Kingmax and Crucial running at FSB speeds in excess of 165MHz so it certainly doesn't seem to be a bad choice.

As a fan of Crucial memory I must admit I was taken aback by the performance of this stuff. The difference may be impossible to notice in regular use but coupled with the benefits of its TinyBGA packaging Kingmax has a great deal going for it. Until we see regular aggressive overclocks happening with Kingmax onboard they're going to have a hard time breaking in to the enthusiast ranks, but I've no doubt it has the balls to get the job done when the going gets tough.

For the more mainstream user the recommendation is easier. Kingmax offers the advantages that make it clearly superior to similar products in terms of its thermal, electrical and price advantage and should be considered a list leader. My only reservation is with regards the problem mentioned earlier linked to fitting pairs. But for this I'd have no hesitation offering Kingmax a well earned recommended award and a better score, but until I know more about this I have to judge it on what I've seen.

Update : We recently reviewed the Epox 8KHA+ which proved beyond doubt that the performance you see here was due to the motherboards in use. Using the Epox, this memory was able to hit an fsb setting of 171MHz with little effort. If you'd like to know more, head over and read the review. As a result the rating has been amended as below.