Final words and conclusion

Although DDR3 RAM is not popular, mainly because of the high street prices, the Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 DDR-3 kit is certainly worthy of consideration if you are shopping for a DDR-3 system. It is a very fast DDR-3 set which can also withstand working with relatively tight timings, even overclocked. While the 7-6-6 timings certainly will appear very high for DDR-2 overclockers, they are very good for DDR-3 RAM and are not by any means comparable due to the 8-bit pre-fetch buffer of the DDR-3.

Our only disappointment would be the overclocking ‘wall’ which we hit at 1780MHz. No matter if we loosened the timings or raised the voltage, the RAM would simply not be stable beyond that point. Although that is a respectable overclock, we craved for more, however as DDR-3 RAM chips are rapidly progressing, manufacturers update their modules just as fast, so kit which will hit the market in a week or two may overclock considerably better as well. To be fair, running the RAM at their reference speed of 1600MHz requires overclocking, or a new Penryn CPU which are just about to hit the market.

What do these awards mean?

The Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 2GB kit can be bought directly from Crucial for £328,99 inc VAT.