ocz experience

[c00z]

I have now had the grace of using two of ocz's best dual channel ram. I have used both the pc3200 el 2*256meg DC and the pc3500 el 2*256 DC.

Here are the results:

pc3200 came to a overclock of 426 with Vdimm of 2.9V and timings of a somewhat relaxed 2-2-3-6

pc3500 overclocked to a better 466 with Vdimm of 2.9V and timings of again a somewhat relaxed 2-2-3-6

Both were tested on the same motherboard which is a ABIT NF7-S
with the chipset voltage increased from the default 1.6V to 1.7V being the 1.6V is a standard increase from the manufactures specs of 1.5V

Barton 2800+
onboard sound
thermalright sk-7 with artic silver

These results are supposed to give someone who is considering buying either of these ram a idea of what to expect upon purchase


one final note.. the pc3200 is dual sided ram while the pc3500 is SINGLE sided...

[Austin]

I'm still wary of OCZ RAM personally, too many flaky stuff in the near past for me. I much prefer to look at Crucial or TwinMOS, generic is okay if you have a really tight budget and the likes of Corsair is way over-priced. Still I would rate OCZ higher than Geil but IMHO that's not saying much really.

Of course for SktA owners there's little point in going for more than PC3200 as 400FSB is already more than they (heck they're right around 2.1ghz), do consider how much you're paying for minimal gains. Also watch out for the 'low latency', 'dual matched' and 'hand picked' slogans as IMHO they're only there to take more of your money and almost entirely unecessary. I'm sure I'm in a minority but that's my opinion anyway!

[acidrainy]

Originally posted by Austin
Of course for SktA owners there's little point in going for more than PC3200 as 400FSB is already more than they (heck they're right around 2.1ghz), do consider how much you're paying for minimal gains.

But the clocks that you've just seen are with Socket A.....?
Would that not mean that if you wanted a fsb of 232... 3500 was the stuff your after...? As shown, it's possible....

[Austin]

Possible but FSB speeds above 400mhz are more for show or bragging rights than actual perf gains, SktA simply doesn't need the bandwidth. I'm not saying the gains are zero, just that they're very small esp when you consider the added strain and cost of all the components involved. As processor speed increases the FSB and RAM bandwidth become bigger issues, perhaps around 2.5ghz there would be the same sort of gain as there is on a 2.0ghz CPU going from 266FSB to 333FSB.

[acidrainy]

Its a fact. People do like to run their FSB over 200MHz.
The performance gains are there...

As for the price diff... we are talking about £3.50 per chip
As for what that this does to the MHz-to-Pounds ratio...

(Prices taken from OcUK)
Formula: "(Speed/Price)/No. Sticks of RAM"
OCZ 512MB (2x256MB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series DDR CAS2
(213/140.88)/2 £0.76 per MHz, per Stick

OCZ 512MB (2x256MB) PC3500 Dual Channel Series EL-DDR CAS2
(233/147.93)/2 £0.78 per MHz, Per Stick


Thats damn close in my book.....
Your always going to be spending more on faster kit, but when the price difference is that small, why not get the faster stuff?

[acidrainy]

Even if your not using the ram at the speeds mentioned, you are buying a higher quality piece of kit...

Even running both sticks at just 200FSB, your going to get the 3500 running at tighter settings... That's certainly the case with my setup and a friends XMS3200 in this rig....

I say your spending that much on something, whats a few quid more if your going to get a better product?

[Austin]

Okay it's not a lot of cash in that example but you're still paying 5% more for virtually zero real world gain. Not that £8 is really going to get you a better gfx card or CPU but that is where I'd suggest plumping the extra 5%.

BUT WAIT...

http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/home.php?cat=331

type - 256mb - 512mb
PC3200 64.05 - 124.48
PC3500 73.54 - 137.45
PC3700 89.77 - n/a

Using the 256mb sticks (most popular size esp dual channel) as an example you pay 15% more for PC3500 and just over 40% for PC3700. For 2 sticks that's an extra £18.98 and £51.44 respectively you're paying for a VERY minimal real world perf gain.

£20 could get you an XP2600+ 333FSB over an XP2100+266FSB or an XP2000+ 266FSB over a Duron 1.3ghz 200FSB. £50 could get you an XP2700+ 333FSB over an XP2200+ 266FSB or an XP2500+ 333FSB over a Duron 1.3ghz 200FSB. In gfx card terms £20 gets you Rad9200 over a GF2mx400 while £50 gets you a GF4TI4200 over a GF2mx400 and nearly a Rad9800 over a GF-FX5600ultra. I'd say there's more benefit putting your money there

EDIT. Prices based on OCuk and for the 2nd CPU prices and gfx prices Dabs. Also the fastest RAM timings are only about 1% faster than the slowest in real world things like games, where most people want to see their money at work.

[TiG]

Perfomance games do exist with higher FSB, games don't usually show these up, but all apps where memory bandwidth is a must, it does show up real performance increases,

Yes the timing of the ram only makes up for 1% sure, but as shown on the previous hexus board by M@TT pifast definitely noticed increased FSB. Figures where very impressive with increased FSB on same processor speed,
e.g FSB @ 200 * 10 was quicker than FSB @ 166 * 12 which was quicker than FSB @ 200 * 15.

By this method faster FSB at 233 FSB * 8.5 is going to be quicker than 200fsb.

cOOz did you manage to get the system stable at 233fsb?.

TiG

[acidrainy]

Austin why bother spending more on a CPU than you have to...?

You talk about using the money in other places.... why?
Why not do both? Save money on a CPU, get better RAM, Clock it further than you could clock the more expensive Processor and spend pretty much the same amount of money...

I'm willing to bet mine, and many other users of these forums XP1700+ JIUHB DLT3C's (£43.48 cpucity.co.uk) can out-pace a 2600+ with a decent stick of RAM. Than a 2600+ AIUHB
(£72.85 cpucity.co.uk) with a poorer stick of RAM...

Ram is more important than you might think as it will effect what you can push out of your equipment. After all we are talking about how well we can overclock these things....

The machine you see bellow in my sig runs faster than a P4C 3GHz and because I have bought good RAM I still have more headroom.... I'm also running at 2-2-2-4, I'm pretty sure that 3200 ram wouldn't let me do that...

I may have spent allot on ram.... but that ram lets me turn a 1.4GHz chip into something that can kick a P4 3GHz's (pluralisation?) proverbial "ass"


My final word on this (I hope)... There is preformace gains from using a higher FSB, this has been illustated countless times...

If it's what you want to do. Why not? My point is, if you want to run a faster rig, or might want to get the better ram so you can at least have the headroom to do it later down the line... Spend the £7-odd more. I'd rather have a decent stick of RAM in my computer that will get me the timings/fsb that I want.

[TiG]

A stock p4c 3gig maybe, but you got to remember my system is also running a much higher fsb than your system is, 250fsb at present and i'm not pushing mine hard, i've had my twinmos 3200ddr at 208mhz at 2-6-2-2, with the processor running at 3120mhz.

I think i'd take a stab and beating your amd cpu. But i still agree with your comments on better ram, if i could be bothered to spend the money on some decent ram and a water cooling kit, i'm sure i'd have my system up to 280fsb somewhere...

TiG

[acidrainy]

lol yeah, I'm sure your chip will go higher than mine!
My point was just to go for better RAM over the poorer stuff

I was just trying to voice my opinion of "Buy good now and don't regret it later"

[c00z]

well I for one have seen massive gains from a frontside bus of original 333 overclocked to 466mhz. Also the mhz of the chip was raised to excentuate this gain is fsb.

Is anyone in this forum canadian. I only got ocz since the availability of anything other than ocz, cosair, kingmax is nill.

I think cosair is far too expensive and kingmax is rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishty so it left me with only one choice.


currently running 233*10 for 2330mhz so a fine overclock...

[Austin]

** SORRY GUYS, wrote this reply straight after TiG's initial reply but dumb-a$$ me forgot to press SUBMIT **

I think you do reach a point where the CPU and subsystem basicly doesn't benefit fromt he extra bandwidth. I doubt a Duron would benefit from 333-400FSB by much more than 266FSB and maybe even an Athlon 1.4ghz or low AthlonXP. In fact many people wasted precious time and money back when Pally XP2000+ was king in order to use the then magical 333FSB ... gains in everything were tiny and back then the hw and time needed were high. Here's a review:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1595&p=12
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...lonxp-166.html
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/20...s/index.x?pg=4

Note as soon as you get outside of synthetic bm'ing gains from the 25% bandwidth increase (FSB & RAM) yield between 0% and 6% and that's running those games in a relatively low resolution, common in CPU/RAM/FSB reviews as speed diffs look bigger than they really are. Better gains can be had from running the CPU 66mhz faster, meaning an AthlonXP2100+ 266FSB mostly beats an AthlonXP2000+ 333FSB. The CPU reaches a point where most of the extra bandwidth is largely unecessary. It seems true that AthlonXP don't need (ie truly benefit from) 333FSB until you get around 2.0ghz. If you have the hw already for 400FSB (and in truth it doesn't cost much now) then it makes sense to use it and get any gains you can, but a 20% bandwidth increase is only likely to boost you 3%ish in real world stuff ... who really needs to calculate PI to x decimal places or smile at Sandra's memory bm?

As for more up to date CPUs and 400FSB:

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDUz

Even at XP3200+ speed, 400FSB vs 333FSB is about 5% faster in BusWinstone & ConCreatWinstone BUT not even 1% faster when it comes to gaming. Take a look at most reviews of the XP3200+ which is 512kL2 2.1ghz on 400FSB compared to the 333FSB of each; 512kL2 XP3000+, 256kL2 XP2700+ & 256kL2 XP2800+.

[Austin]

I'm not saying RAM and bandwidth aren't important, just that people go over the top with numbers and forget to look at the actual real perf gains. If someone has a mobo, CPU and RAM which can do 333FSB but not 400FSB there is very little point in investing in kit to go 400FSB as the gains are simply small. If you're buying new kit the 400FSB able stuff hardly costs any more than the 333FSB stuff but for many people it's a matter of chucking out their current mobo or RAM and IMHO that's simply not worth it.

The P4 esp 800FSB+ is a very different beast to the AthlonXP, it calls out for rediculous amounts of bandwidth. Gains are there even for 1000FSB and DDR500 and it's esp important due to the locked multiplier too. So for a P4 user, sure PC3500-3700 may very well be worth the extra but I simply don't think the same is true for AthlonXP unless you really feel the need to eek out every last 0.1% of perf. Not only that but anything faster than PC3200 is not JEDEC and hence you're trusting that it is 'hand-picked' (rather than random PC3200 or overvolted stuff). It isn't a real spec and as such isn't as compatible ... if you want to go for it cool, but I think most people simply don't need it.

I agree that you want to keep your RAM as future-proof as possible and many people who bought PC2100 when PC2700 cost little more will surely regret it, I rec'd them to get the faster RAM even if it runs as PC2100 in the meantime. I have rec'd people to get PC3200 since it became JEDEC (it became affordable too) but for the AthlonXP users and >PC3200 I simply don't see any need nor future-proof-ability (like that's a word LOL). DDR-II will surely replace PC3200 rather than DDR PC3500-3700, it may not be as future-proof as you like to think. RAM is a low profit area and the manu's will do anything they can to convinve you to pay that little extra whether that's for 'low latency' (1%ish boost), 'matched pairs' (99% pointless), pretty extras like HS's or false specs (and most likely often random or overvolted PC3200).

[acidrainy]

Originally posted by Austin

As for more up to date CPUs and 400FSB:

http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=NDUz

You trust a hardocp review?!


As for manufacturers trying to get more money out of you.... That also true...It may be a marketing con but basically, what were talking about is the effectiveness of the ram to what it says on the label

From c00z tests.. he shows us that the 3500 is better then the 3200... end of story.........

with such low price difference i would be more comfortable getting an over-rated stick to use in a system for 200fsb... It makes me feel more comfortable that the thing Ive not seen irl and is getting shipped to my by FedEx is going to work for what I want it to do, and its going to do this well!

This is a personal preference of course