I have to admit from the outset, looking at the G2 kit I expected below par performance. This was founded on first impressions, the G2 kit isn't aggressively styled as compared to other kits. I guess the lesson here is taken from that age old proverb - "don't judge a book by its cover".

The Patriot G2 kit under review today has presented some fantastic performance in a range of scenarios. The 3DMark 11 and SANDRA benchmarks revealed particular improvements over previously reviewed memory kits. Game performance may have shown nominal improvements but in Unreal Tournament 3 performance was notably better.


Overclocking on Sandy Bridge has its limits as you are probably aware and I think particularly for a 1600MHz kit with CAS timings of CL9 and voltage of 1.65v we are greatly constrained. Had this been a kit with lower voltage and CAS timings we would probably have been able to achieve a better overclock. When the G2 kit was on the test bench 1866MHz was achieved but only by increasing the CAS timings to CL10. It's generally considered that CL10 is very high and regarded as uncharted territory, yet still, the results yield some interesting results.

Patriot have done a great job with the G2 series, because of the excellent performance out of the box combined with low cost, this makes them great value for money and a recommended buy. They are easily one of the cheapest 1600MHz 8GB kits on the market to date, and what I like especially is the fact this kit is extremely low-profile - compatibility issues with CPU coolers will be a thing of the past!