As we mentioned before, Patriot PDC21G8500ELK memory kit has two targets. First, the regular user that has an Intel CPU running at 1,066 MHz externally and wants to have his/her memory modules also running at 1,066 MHz. The problem here is finding a motherboard that accepts DDR2-1066 memory modules. The new ASUS P5B is one of the few motherboards around supporting both Core 2 Duo CPUs and DDR2-1066 memories.

The second target is, of course, the overclocking community. With these modules Patriot ensures that you will reach at least 1,066 MHz with them – and we were able to push the memory frequency up to 1,180 MHz in our tests – even if your motherboard doesn’t support DDR2-1066. Of course you must use an overclocking-oriented motherboard such as ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe, or buying this memory kit won’t make any sense at all.

This memory kit achieved the same performance of Corsair TWIN2X1024-8500, which has the same speed grade and runs with very similar timings (5-5-5-15 vs. 5-5-5-16 on the reviewed kit) and quoted at the same price range. The difference between the two was on overclocking: we achieved a higher overclocking with Patriot’s part.

So if we were overclockers looking for a DDR2-1066 kit, we’d go with Patriot – if money weren’t an issue, of course.

In fact pricing is the main drawback of this memory kit. You can find this 1 GB kit around USD 255. For the same price you can buy a DDR2-800 2 GB kit with CL4 from Corsair at Newegg.com – we are talking about the double of the capacity for the same money. Of course in this case the manufacturer doesn’t guarantee any overclocking at all.

This huge price gap crushes the idea of having average Joe installing this memory kit on their new Core 2 Duo system: as the performance difference between using DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 was only between 3% and 7% in Quake 4 (you may have a higher performance gain in other games, though), we don’t think it is worthwhile as you can have twice the amount of RAM for the same price.