OCZ PC3200 Gold GX XTC Memory Kit (2GB)

What makes these OCZ DDR400 sticks so interesting is the heatspreader design.  Styled XTC for Xtreme Thermal Convection, they evoke a few questions that deserve some explanation.  Let me explain; the heatspreader's construction is that of gold plated aluminum to help maximize the convection process.  It breaks down like this, copper can hold more thermal energy than aluminum but aluminum dissipates thermal energy (heat) faster than copper.  From the use of a gold/aluminum hybrid, it looks as if OCZ is looking to improve on the efficiency of how fast the heatspreader does its job.  This in theory is by making the contact area of the heatspreader with the memory chips themselves a honey comb design.  The thinking is that this honey comb pattern allows a greater air exchange around this vented heatspreader and the areas between the chips.  Below you can see the memory modules beneath the honey comb contact plate of the XTC heatspreader.

  

'Convection' in our example here is the process of dissipating heat into the air.  The efficiency of the convection is guided by 'conduction'; getting the heat from the memory ICs to the heatspreader.  Conduction is all about contact area.  The more you have, the better.  Check out the XTC heatspreader's mesh contact plate.  Not much contact area is it?  Here's where science and smarter design take off.  By increasing the speed in which the heat is dissipated from the memory ICs to the air (convection) they increase the volume of heat that can pass through the heatspreader in a given amount of time.  Like anything, there is a balance and we'll have to see if OCZ was able to balance the marriage of conduction (hot memory chips to heatspreader) with convection (heatspreader dissipating heat into the air.)  If conduction needs overpower the convection ability of the XTC heatspreaders, it's game over.

  

Here is a quick shot of the OCZ memory module itself.  Since these are marked by OCZ it's not quite as easy as say looking up the module's specs on the Samsung site for instance if they were Samsung chips.  I love a mystery though.

Performance

To test out the OCZ PC3200 GX XTC units today our testing methodology is simply to test the memory at spec speed then see how high we can get it taking notes along the way.  Using SiSoft Sandra 2005 Pro's Memory Bandwidth Benchmark, we intend on measuring the maximum memory bus bandwidth in MB/s as well as the memory integer and float buffered score as calculated by SiSoft 2005.  Super-Pi will follow this up with a quazi-practical benchmark, measuring how long it takes to calculate Pi to the two millionth digit.  These scores will be recorded at the stock speed of DDR 400 at 2-3-3-8 1T timings as well as the maximum overclock at 2-3-3-8 1T and 3-3-3-8 1T levels.  Our test bed is certainly dated but remains a dandy memory 1:1 radio testing platform. 

Test Bed

• Intel P4 2.4 GHz Northwood

• ASUS P4C800E Deluxe (i875P) mainboard

• HIS Radeon X850XT IceQ II (AGP) VGA Card

• Maxtor DiamondMax 80gb SATA HDD

• Generic DVD-RW drive

• Windows XP Pro SP2

Results

Firing things up on our older i875 based test bed, we proceeded the increase the memory frequency keeping things at the OCZ PC3200 GX XTC's factory 2-3-3-8 1T timing level.  Things topped out for a maximum stable overclock of 221MHz.  Nothing fantastic but fair.  Loosening up the CAS latency from 2 to 3 we got a substantially higher speed; 261MHz to be exact.  This I though as very impressive for DDR400 memory. 

  

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