Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4D Dominator

Verdict: A budget addition to the Dominator range.

Corsair's PC2-6400 memory is the slower of this month's two kits, running at 800MHz out of the box. It boasts tight latency timings of 4-4-4-12, and, like the OCZ, it's SLI memory-compatible. The weighty, good-looking Dominator heatsinks are nicely finished and make installing the modules easy. Scientifically speaking, we still aren't convinced that these big black heatsinks are a necessity, but they look cool and heat up in testing. They also used to be exclusive to Corsair's big-budget PC2-8500 kits, so it's good to see them used on more affordable RAM. The Dominator kit's performance was slower than that of the PC2-8500 OCZ kit (see below) at stock speeds and latencies, with a Paint Shop Pro image editing score of 1.76, compared with 1.77 from the OCZ, although the difference is minimal. Slackening the timings to 5-5-5-15 and upping the voltage of the Corsair RAM from the recommended 2.1V to 2.3V allowed us to overclock the Corsair memory to 1,000MHz, the same speed as that of PC2-8000 memory. It started to flake out when pushed higher, however, so we couldn't reach a PC2-8500 speed of 1,066MHz.

Conclusion

A 2GB kit of Dominator RAM such as this for only £116 is decent value, and performance is certainly good.

However, the tight latencies don't make a discernible difference to performance in a Core 2 Duo system. Corsair's PC2-6400 XMS2 kit is far cheaper and would be a better choice if you're after pure value for money, while the OCZ kit proves that if you're after raw speed, you can buy faster RAM for a similar price.