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One of the annoying problems with AMD platforms was their habit of being fussy about memory running at high speeds when you tried to overclock them. User-friendly certainly wasn't a term that sprang to mind.
With the arrival of the Llano and Bulldozer chip technologies, those problems are thankfully behind us, and the AMD Memory Entertainment Edition 8GB kit is a good case in point.
Thanks to its fairly relaxed 9-9-9-24 latency settings, we got the RAM kit to overclock to 1,866MHz without any bother at all even, at the 1.65V stock voltage. But seeing as the modules come from the Patriot stable, that maybe isn't that much of a surprise.
Having said that, the Patriot Gamer 2 AMD Black Edition memory we previously tested, which was also designed for AMD systems, wouldn't run stably at 1,866MHz but was fine at 1,840MHz.
As you can see from the benchmark results, there's nothing earth-shattering about the performance of these AMD modules. And with very safe and conservative CAS latency settings, that's no real surprise.
Hopefully the high-end Radeon Edition modules will enable you to do more extreme tinkering when they appear on the shelves.
We liked
To be honest it's not really a question of like or dislike, the premier question that springs to mind is why bother?
The AMD Memory Entertainment Edition 8GB showed no advantage in performance in our tests, and the fact that the modules have been tested by AMD probably in the cold light of day will make no difference in making a choice for or against it. Most people already have their favourite brands of memory. After all, there are so many makes to choose from already.
We disliked
There's nothing to dislike about the memory either. It does what it says on the tin and shows some overclocking potential.
Final verdict
It may not be the fastest memory out of the box, but at least now AMD with its latest CPUs and chipsets has a strong enough product to entice another manufacturer into putting its badge on its stuff.
