OCZ PC3200 EL DDR 400 memory

Manufacturer: OCZ Technology
Supplied by: OCZ Technology
Street Price: $165 

by Dean Barker  (1/11/2003)

Introduction

Again we find ourselves set in the starting blocks with some fast RAM and a desire to know exactly how fast?  DDR has reached new heights with PC3500 and now even PC3700 rated memory is on the market.  These new levels, DDR400, DDR433, and even DDR466 are being advertised at a threshold higher than what is even officially recognized.  The same is true for mainboards.  We have an entire new chipset, the KT400, designed to officially support an unofficial standard of DDR400.

Today we have a stick of OCZ's PC3200 memory that like so many others, is touted as some of the fastest stuff around.  We intend on verifying this to see if the OCZ RAM can handle the rodeo burger.  Thanks go to OCZ Technology for making this review possible.

The Unit

The OCZ memory, like many of its competitors, comes equipped with heatspreaders.  These spreaders are of copper construction instead of being made of aluminum.  Not that weight is a big issue with memory but out of curiosity, we checked it.  A standard DDR DIMM unit weighs just shy of 40 gms.  The copper heatspreader most certainly did add some weight to things bringing it up to a corpulent 77 gms. 

     

The OCZ stick we have is of the 512mb variety but is also available in 256mb sizes.  Let's look at some specs.

Specifications

• Copper Heatspreaders

• Designed for memory bus speed of 2 x 200 MHz (400 MHz DDR)

• CAS latency: 2 cycles

• RAS precharge: 3 cycles

• RAS to CAS delay: 3 cycles

• Command rate: 2T (2 cycles)

• Available in 256mb and 512mb DIMMs

• Lifetime warranty

Performance

Testing the memory is straight forward, we push it till it fails.  In order to test the stability of the memory once we begin to tap out, we are going to run the SiSoft Sandra 2003 burn in module as well as Mad Onion's 3Dmark2001 SE in a continuous loop for one hour to confirm that our final max memory speed was stable.

We are going to push things to the limit at three different memory timings: 2-2-2-5 1T, 2-3-3-5 1T, and 2.5-3-3-6 2T.  OCZ rates their memory at 400MHz DDR at 2-3-3-6 2T  Most of you who will run memory at or above 400MHz mark, will do so at the most aggressive settings that stability allows hence we want to sample a spread of settings.

 

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