Verdict: Great for Athlon 64 systems, not so good for Core 2

In the Elizabethan era, corsairs were pirates who were officially commissioned by governments to prey on other countries' ships. Corsair memory, on the other hand, is far less lethal; it's only computer memory, after all.

The Twin2X XMS2-6400C3 kit is rated as PC2-6400, which means that it's guaranteed at speeds of up to 800MHz. The latency timings are very low, though, at just 3 - 4 - 3 - 9, although it requires 2.2V to achieve this.

The Twin2X XMS2-6400C3 proved to be very fast in our Athlon 64 test rig, due to its low latency timings, but failed to shine in our Core 2 test system, except in the SuperPI 32M test. Despite its low latency timings, we succeeded in overclocking the Twin2X XMS2-6400C3 to 900MHz by increasing its voltage to 2.45V. This is a very impressive achievement considering the low latencies, and would make it ideal for an Athlon 64 system. If you own a Core 2 system then you don't need to worry about low latency timings. By dropping the timings to 6 - 6 - 6 - 18, we were able to ramp up the frequency to an impressive 1.16GHz.

Although the Twin2X XMS2-6400C3 is expensive, its good performance in Athlon 64 systems means that it's worth shortlisting. However, Core 2 system builders should look towards the awesome Dominator kit (see p85) if they want Corsair memory inside their PC.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
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• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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