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| OCZ EL PC3700/PC3500 Basic Series DDR |
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| Written by Alexandru Spataru | |
| Wednesday, 20 June 2007 | |
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Page 7 of 7
Now, the timings gave me a lot of headaches. I originally wanted to set the aggressive timings to CAS 2 5-2-2 not CAS 2 6-2-2, but the board would refuse to work with the OCZ RAM if the tRAS was set to any value lower than 6, no matter what voltage I used. Of course, at DDR333, both modules worked just fine at CAS 2 4-2-2, but once I hit DDR400, tRAS need to be set to 6 or above just to load Windows. This is very strange, but I did some testing and the difference between the CAS 2 4-2-2 and CAS 2 6-2-2 was almost non-existent, which mean the tRAS has very little impact on performance.
Just out of curiosity, I tested the same timings on the Intel board, and both modules worked at DDR400 CAS 2 5-2-2. Go figure. Too bad the Intel board didn't belong to me and it didn't allow too much overclocking; DDR418 was about the limit (FSB 167MHz and FSB:RAM ratio 4:5). Anyway, for the purpose of pure RAM overclocking, the 8RDA+ board is just perfect, so no complaints here. During testing, I measured the temperature of the copper heat spreaders using a thermal probe, and this temperature never exceeded 45C, not even when the RAM was working at the fastest speed and with 2.90V, so the heat spreaders really do a good job. Not to mention they look very cool.
I'm sure a memory voltage above 2.90V would have helped a bit; maybe the module would have reached DDR520 completely stable. A note of caution though, I am told that the new 4ns OCZ chips are made in 0.13 micron process, so they're not very resistant to high voltages nor do they require voltages above 2.80V to operate properly. And indeed, setting the voltage to 2.90V didn't help much, but it did help a bit. The Basic PC3500 didn't do too bad either: DDR455 with CAS 2.5 7-3-3 is above the specifications, though not by much. However, it can do DDR430 at CAS 2 6-2-2, which is very nice. At stock speed, DDR433, the RAM can do CAS 2.0 6-2-2 almost stable, but not quite. I guess a bit more voltage would have helped here. OCZ seems to have a way with RAM. Their EL DDR PC3700 not only performs great at stock speed, but also overclocks like crazy. Either I'm lucky, or those 4ns OCZ chips really are as good as they get. The Basic PC3500 is just that, a basic RAM module for overclockers on a budget, but do not overlook it, because it's not bad at all. In fact, if I were to buy some RAM for an nForce2 motherboard or any other socket A mobo, I would rather get the Basic PC3500 because it's cheap and because very few motherboards can run a FSB of 215MHz or more, thus the PC3500 with its DDR430 at CAS 2 6-2-2 could be the perfect cheap solution. Although I haven't had any previous experience with OCZ products, this first contact impressed me very much. Their EL DDR series seems to be quite successful and from what I've seen so far, they have the best specifications from all the memory modules on the market. I haven't tested the other products to have a more informed opinion, but the PC3700 EL DDR is hard to surpass in both performance and overclocking. Pros
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 27 June 2007 ) |
