Patriot DDR400 2-2-2/DDR533 3-4-4: Performance AND Value

Since it was first introduced by Corsair almost a year ago, memory based on Samsung TCCD chips has become the performance standard for DDR memory. As we saw in our roundup of memory for the AMD Athlon 64, Samsung TCCD also performs particularly well on the Athlon 64 with the on-chip memory controller. Almost every memory manufacturer now has a version of its own TCCD memory. In our recent reviews, we have seen TCCD from Corsair, G. Skill, Geil, Mushkin, OCZ, and PQI. All of the TCCD-based memory performs well, with the best performance coming from TCCD based on the Brainpower PCB. While Samsung TCCD has recently been challenged by Crucial Ballistix and the revival of Winbond parts in OCZ VX and the new BH5 Value RAM, there is no doubt that in most systems, at the voltage ranges seen in most motherboards, TCCD-based memory is the standard.

Into this climate, PDP Systems has introduced its own Samsung TCCD memory built on the Brainpower PCB. Patriot has chosen to rate the PC3200+XBLK at two different speeds: DDR400 at 2-2-2-5 and DDR533 at 3-4-4-8. This is quite a broad range and we will see if the memory meets or exceeds those ratings. The Patriot memory also stands out from the TCCD crowd by being the most reasonably priced TCCD that we could find on the web. At around $225 for a 1GB (512MB x 2) pair, the Patriot is even cheaper than the lowest-priced G. Skill at the vendors where we checked. Since the largest barrier to TCCD pricing is the actual cost of the chips from Samsung, reportedly about $6 per chip (or $190 for 32 chips for a 1GB pair), then Patriot is very near the lowest price currently possible for TCCD modules.

The question, of course, is how the Patriot performs compared to other TCCD-based memory. It has the right stuff in its design, but does it deliver in the all-important performance arena?