W1zzard
Jan 9, 2006, 10:57 AM
[page=Introduction & Packaging]
Introduction
From the Manufacturer OCZ Technology (http://www.ocztechnology.com):
533MHz DDR2
CL 3-3-3-12 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
Also available in a 512MB and 1GB module
Unbuffered
Gold Layered XTC Heatspreader*
Lifetime Warranty
1.9 Volts
240 Pin DIMM
EVP - OCZ's unique Extended Voltage Protection feature that allows performance enthusiasts to use a VDIMM of 2.2V ± 5% without invalidating their OCZ Lifetime Warranty.
A real innovation is the new heatspreaders OCZ uses:
XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreaders optimize the thermal management of memory modules by promoting greater airflow by means of micro-convection throughout what is usually the dead air space inside conventional heatspreader designs. In this manner, build-up of heat is avoided and thermal dissipation of the memory components is offloaded more efficiently through the honeycomb design. At the same time, mechanical stability is maintained.
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package2.jpg)
This is OCZ's standard memory package. It can be opened without a knife and unlike many other packages it will not be destroyed by opening it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory2.jpg)
New on this DDR2 memory is that OCZ uses their completely re-engineered XTC heatspreaders.
[page=A closer look]
A closer look
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/sticker_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/sticker.jpg)
Each module has a sticker on it, which gives the rated speed and the stock timings. The rated timings of 4-4-4-12 are the standard speeds of JEDEC DDR2.
OCZ's new heatspreaders are able to keep your memory temperatures down, even during overclocking, or with increased voltage.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs3.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs4.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs2.jpg)
A thin thermal tape holds the heatspreader in place. Is it very thin, so you can see the memory chips shine through.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb2.jpg)
I'm not 100% sure but as far as I know this PCB is made by Brainpower who are known for their quality.
[page=Performance & Overclocking]
Test Setup
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="systable">
<tr><th colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th></tr>
<tr>
<th width="100">CPU:</th>
<td>P4 3.0E 1MB Prescott</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Motherboard:</th>
<td>ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Memory:</th>
<td>2x 512 MB OCZ EL DDR2 PC2-4200 Gold GX XTC</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Video Card:</th>
<td>ATI Radeon X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Harddisk:</th>
<td>Maxtor Diamondmax 160GB</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Power Supply:</th>
<td>HEC PurePower 475</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Software:</th>
<td>Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.13</td>
</tr>
</table>
Performance
Usually we are showing you here a comparison of how well memory gains from increasing voltage. During first tests we found out that the PC2-4200 Gold GX does not gain any overclocking at all from increased voltage.
That's why we will be focusing on memory timings during this review.
First, we tested how the memory performs at the default settings recommended by OCZ. When these settings are applied and the overclocking starts, this memory reached fast DDR2-720 speeds.
If you can overclock that much, why not reduce the timings some and get extra performance in return? We gradually tried tightening timings and saw a sweet spot which offers a good compromise between timings and overclocking headroom at the 4-4-2-4 setting. Here the maximum overclocking is reduced only by a few MHz, while performance is a good deal better due to the tighter timings.
Another timing set we tried was 3-3-2-4 which is the best we could get the memory to run at. While overclocking is down a lot here, this might be a good setting for people who are not going to overclock, but still want to get the most out of their memory.
Running more relaxed timings, which would usually give you a higher maximum memory overclock did not help at all. At best we saw a 1 MHz increase over the plateau of DDR2-720. Such a small overclock is not worth it, for the loss of performance caused by the loose timings.
For further comparison, the test "JEDEC DDR2-400" shows a generic DDR module running at JEDEC standard timings.
<table width="640" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr>
<th colspan="9" style="font-size:larger"><strong>OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Gold GX XTC </strong></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">CPU Clock &<br />
Memory Ratio</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Speed</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Timings</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Read</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Write</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Latency</th>
<th>Quake 3<br />
Timedemo</th>
<th>3DMark<br />
2001SE</th>
<th>SuperPi<br />
Mod 1M</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>5331 MB/s </td>
<td>1591 MB/s </td>
<td>104.3 ns </td>
<td>285.6 fps </td>
<td>20360</td>
<td>44.63 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5539 MB/s </td>
<td>1738 MB/s </td>
<td>99.3 ns </td>
<td>287.7 fps </td>
<td>20574</td>
<td>43.84 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>3-3-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5656 MB/s </td>
<td>1842 MB/s </td>
<td>93.2 ns </td>
<td>289.6 fps </td>
<td>20714</td>
<td>43.38 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 269 3:4 </th>
<td>360 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>7654 MB/s </td>
<td>2574 MB/s </td>
<td>70.5 ns </td>
<td>388.6 fps </td>
<td>26321</td>
<td>32.26 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 264 3:4 </th>
<td>352 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>7869 MB/s </td>
<td>2732 MB/s </td>
<td>70.6 ns </td>
<td>348.0 fps </td>
<td>26102</td>
<td>32.56 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 213 3:4 </th>
<td>284 MHz</td>
<td>3-3-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5958 MB/s </td>
<td>2141 MB/s </td>
<td>82.8 ns </td>
<td>311.5 fps </td>
<td>22056</td>
<td>40.11 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>JEDEC DDR2-400 </th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>5331 MB/s </td>
<td>1591 MB/s </td>
<td>104.3 ns </td>
<td>285.6 fps </td>
<td>20360</td>
<td>44.63 s </td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestlatency.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/quake3.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/3dmark2001.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/superpi.gif
Overall performance is very good across the board. With that much overclocking headroom there is no reason to run your memory 1:1 to your FSB.
For an easier comparison with other modules, we set a maximum voltage of 2.9V and tested until we found the highest clock frequency and fastest timings for this memory. The benchmarks Everest Read, Everest Write and Quake 3 were run. We then calculated the performance increase in percent compared to some standard DDR2-400 memory running at JEDEC DDR2-400 (4-4-4-12). The average percentage of the three benchmarks is listed in following table:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/vsjedec.gif
[page=Value and Conclusion]
Value and Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
Two 512 MB modules of OCZ's PC2-4200 Gold GX XTC cost you about $127 which is really cheap.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Does not need high voltage to perform
Very good price
Solid performance
Lots of overclocking headroom
Timings can be tightened some
Warranty for higher voltage
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Overclock does not scale with voltage
Does not gain from relaxing timings
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>8.3</th>
<td>If your motherboard offers only very limited memory voltage options, then you will have to consider this memory from OCZ. Going from the stock of DDR2-525 to an overclock of DDR2-720 without any voltage increase is very impressive. On top of that you can tighten the timings some without a considerable loss of overclocking. If you know you won't need such high memory clocks, but prefer to have better latencies, you can also use timings of 3-3-2-4 which are very close to the limits of what most chipsets let you use. At this setting there is still enough headroom left for some overclocking.<br />
Enthusiasts who want to pump a lot of voltage through their memory might not like this memory much, because it does not scale with voltage at all. Also relaxing the timings to further increase the overclock is not possible, but the overclocking range at the default voltage should be fine for most users anyway. Everybody should be able to run the memory dividers set to "faster than FSB", which gives an added performance boost.
On top of the solid performance you have OCZ's lifetime warranty and the unique looking XTC heatspreaders. All this comes at a very competitive price which will make you think twice about getting no-name memory for your DDR2 system.</td>
</tr>
<tr><th></hd><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/recommended.gif</td></tr>
</table>
Introduction
From the Manufacturer OCZ Technology (http://www.ocztechnology.com):
533MHz DDR2
CL 3-3-3-12 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)
Also available in a 512MB and 1GB module
Unbuffered
Gold Layered XTC Heatspreader*
Lifetime Warranty
1.9 Volts
240 Pin DIMM
EVP - OCZ's unique Extended Voltage Protection feature that allows performance enthusiasts to use a VDIMM of 2.2V ± 5% without invalidating their OCZ Lifetime Warranty.
A real innovation is the new heatspreaders OCZ uses:
XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreaders optimize the thermal management of memory modules by promoting greater airflow by means of micro-convection throughout what is usually the dead air space inside conventional heatspreader designs. In this manner, build-up of heat is avoided and thermal dissipation of the memory components is offloaded more efficiently through the honeycomb design. At the same time, mechanical stability is maintained.
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/package2.jpg)
This is OCZ's standard memory package. It can be opened without a knife and unlike many other packages it will not be destroyed by opening it.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/memory2.jpg)
New on this DDR2 memory is that OCZ uses their completely re-engineered XTC heatspreaders.
[page=A closer look]
A closer look
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/sticker_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/sticker.jpg)
Each module has a sticker on it, which gives the rated speed and the stock timings. The rated timings of 4-4-4-12 are the standard speeds of JEDEC DDR2.
OCZ's new heatspreaders are able to keep your memory temperatures down, even during overclocking, or with increased voltage.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs3.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs4.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/hs2.jpg)
A thin thermal tape holds the heatspreader in place. Is it very thin, so you can see the memory chips shine through.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/pcb2.jpg)
I'm not 100% sure but as far as I know this PCB is made by Brainpower who are known for their quality.
[page=Performance & Overclocking]
Test Setup
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="systable">
<tr><th colspan="2" style="font-size:larger;text-align:center">Test System</th></tr>
<tr>
<th width="100">CPU:</th>
<td>P4 3.0E 1MB Prescott</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Motherboard:</th>
<td>ABIT Fatal1ty AA8XE i925XE</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Memory:</th>
<td>2x 512 MB OCZ EL DDR2 PC2-4200 Gold GX XTC</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Video Card:</th>
<td>ATI Radeon X850 Pro PCI-E</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Harddisk:</th>
<td>Maxtor Diamondmax 160GB</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Power Supply:</th>
<td>HEC PurePower 475</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>Software:</th>
<td>Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.13</td>
</tr>
</table>
Performance
Usually we are showing you here a comparison of how well memory gains from increasing voltage. During first tests we found out that the PC2-4200 Gold GX does not gain any overclocking at all from increased voltage.
That's why we will be focusing on memory timings during this review.
First, we tested how the memory performs at the default settings recommended by OCZ. When these settings are applied and the overclocking starts, this memory reached fast DDR2-720 speeds.
If you can overclock that much, why not reduce the timings some and get extra performance in return? We gradually tried tightening timings and saw a sweet spot which offers a good compromise between timings and overclocking headroom at the 4-4-2-4 setting. Here the maximum overclocking is reduced only by a few MHz, while performance is a good deal better due to the tighter timings.
Another timing set we tried was 3-3-2-4 which is the best we could get the memory to run at. While overclocking is down a lot here, this might be a good setting for people who are not going to overclock, but still want to get the most out of their memory.
Running more relaxed timings, which would usually give you a higher maximum memory overclock did not help at all. At best we saw a 1 MHz increase over the plateau of DDR2-720. Such a small overclock is not worth it, for the loss of performance caused by the loose timings.
For further comparison, the test "JEDEC DDR2-400" shows a generic DDR module running at JEDEC standard timings.
<table width="640" border="1" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" class="ramtable">
<tr>
<th colspan="9" style="font-size:larger"><strong>OCZ EL DDR PC-3200 Gold GX XTC </strong></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th nowrap="nowrap">CPU Clock &<br />
Memory Ratio</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Speed</th>
<th>Memory<br />
Timings</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Read</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Write</th>
<th>Everest<br />
Latency</th>
<th>Quake 3<br />
Timedemo</th>
<th>3DMark<br />
2001SE</th>
<th>SuperPi<br />
Mod 1M</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>5331 MB/s </td>
<td>1591 MB/s </td>
<td>104.3 ns </td>
<td>285.6 fps </td>
<td>20360</td>
<td>44.63 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5539 MB/s </td>
<td>1738 MB/s </td>
<td>99.3 ns </td>
<td>287.7 fps </td>
<td>20574</td>
<td>43.84 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 200 1:1</th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>3-3-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5656 MB/s </td>
<td>1842 MB/s </td>
<td>93.2 ns </td>
<td>289.6 fps </td>
<td>20714</td>
<td>43.38 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 269 3:4 </th>
<td>360 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>7654 MB/s </td>
<td>2574 MB/s </td>
<td>70.5 ns </td>
<td>388.6 fps </td>
<td>26321</td>
<td>32.26 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 264 3:4 </th>
<td>352 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>7869 MB/s </td>
<td>2732 MB/s </td>
<td>70.6 ns </td>
<td>348.0 fps </td>
<td>26102</td>
<td>32.56 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>15 x 213 3:4 </th>
<td>284 MHz</td>
<td>3-3-2-4 1.8V </td>
<td>5958 MB/s </td>
<td>2141 MB/s </td>
<td>82.8 ns </td>
<td>311.5 fps </td>
<td>22056</td>
<td>40.11 s </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>JEDEC DDR2-400 </th>
<td>200 MHz</td>
<td>4-4-4-12 1.8V </td>
<td>5331 MB/s </td>
<td>1591 MB/s </td>
<td>104.3 ns </td>
<td>285.6 fps </td>
<td>20360</td>
<td>44.63 s </td>
</tr>
</table>
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestread.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestwrite.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/everestlatency.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/quake3.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/3dmark2001.gif http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/superpi.gif
Overall performance is very good across the board. With that much overclocking headroom there is no reason to run your memory 1:1 to your FSB.
For an easier comparison with other modules, we set a maximum voltage of 2.9V and tested until we found the highest clock frequency and fastest timings for this memory. The benchmarks Everest Read, Everest Write and Quake 3 were run. We then calculated the performance increase in percent compared to some standard DDR2-400 memory running at JEDEC DDR2-400 (4-4-4-12). The average percentage of the three benchmarks is listed in following table:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/OCZ/PC2-4200GoldXTC/images/vsjedec.gif
[page=Value and Conclusion]
Value and Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
Two 512 MB modules of OCZ's PC2-4200 Gold GX XTC cost you about $127 which is really cheap.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Does not need high voltage to perform
Very good price
Solid performance
Lots of overclocking headroom
Timings can be tightened some
Warranty for higher voltage
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Overclock does not scale with voltage
Does not gain from relaxing timings
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>8.3</th>
<td>If your motherboard offers only very limited memory voltage options, then you will have to consider this memory from OCZ. Going from the stock of DDR2-525 to an overclock of DDR2-720 without any voltage increase is very impressive. On top of that you can tighten the timings some without a considerable loss of overclocking. If you know you won't need such high memory clocks, but prefer to have better latencies, you can also use timings of 3-3-2-4 which are very close to the limits of what most chipsets let you use. At this setting there is still enough headroom left for some overclocking.<br />
Enthusiasts who want to pump a lot of voltage through their memory might not like this memory much, because it does not scale with voltage at all. Also relaxing the timings to further increase the overclock is not possible, but the overclocking range at the default voltage should be fine for most users anyway. Everybody should be able to run the memory dividers set to "faster than FSB", which gives an added performance boost.
On top of the solid performance you have OCZ's lifetime warranty and the unique looking XTC heatspreaders. All this comes at a very competitive price which will make you think twice about getting no-name memory for your DDR2 system.</td>
</tr>
<tr><th></hd><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/recommended.gif</td></tr>
</table>