As we've seen with some of our past reviews, OCZ's ram ranks right up ther with some of best we've tested. The Dual Channel kits worked very well, though as with most DC kits, you pay for it. We've preached the merits of DC kits here at VL for quite some time, but understandably, not everyone has the budget for it.
Today we will be taking a look at some OCZ DDR PC-3700 Premier Dual Channel. This is a couple of match sticks of their Premier ram, which happens to be part of OCZ's budget line.
Specifications
512Mb kit (2x 256Mb) and 1Gb kit (2x 512Mb) available
ULN Technology
CL 3-4-8-4
233Mhz FSB / 466 Mhz
Dual Channel Optimised
Rated to handle up to 2.9 volts
Retail packaging
184 pin DIMM
One eye-catcher is the support for up to 2.9v. Though that's a lot of juice, for overclockers, OCZ's Extended Voltage Protection will be of great interest...
OCZ Premier Series PC-3700 features OCZ EVP® Extended Voltage Protection, a circuit protection feature designed to allow performance enthusiasts to tweak their systems without the worry of invalidating the warranty. OCZ Premier Series PC-3700 memory has been optimized for use with the Intel i865/i875 chipsets in dual channel configurations.
Both ram modules arrived in the same shrink wrapped package, with instructions, and in good condition.
The ram modules have a really nice black finish. Not being their top-of-the-line series, the heatspreaders are aluminum rather than copper. We don't think that decision will matter much as we're not too high on heatspreaders to begin with.
On the label you see a bit of information like the size of the module and the rated speed (3700), and the module size.
After installation, it seems that the default SPD settings are 400MHz, 3-4-8-4. This is what was reported in the BIOS of my ABIT NF7-S, and on the spec of the ram. However, the ram is capable of the same timings at 466MHz...
OCZ Premier Series PC-3700 memory using state of the art HyperSpeed®* technology is capable of achieving outrageous speeds of up to 466 MHz at CL 3-4-8-4.
Overclocking
Memtest86 was used to test for stability throughout our over clocking tests. If it failed, we'll be clocking back until the tests pass.
The first test was to see if we could run the OCZ DDR PC-3700 Premier Dual Channel at its rated 466MHz, 3-4-8-4 settings. This is always a good first step just to make sure your ram is working, as it should be. I had to put the voltage at 2.9 for be able to work.
Everything was running well so we will go up 1 MHZ at a time until we reached our maximum over clock. As we approached the higher speeds, we had booting issue, and we've had to increase the memory voltage up to a big 2.9 to maintain stability. At 3-4-8-4, we managed a maximum over clock of 488MHz, but the ram fails the Memtest86 tests. Clocking back down to 16MHz (472 MHz DDR) resolved the problem.
Once again I had trouble with CPU-Z software didn't want to detect my ram. On the CPU-Z site they said they have issue with nForce 2 chipset board. We downloaded old versions and new versions, but for whatever reason, no dice.
Next Page - Test Setup, SiSoft Sandra, & PC Mark 2002
OCZ EL DDR PC3700 Premier Dual Channel: Need some Dual Channel ram, but you don't have a ton of cash to blow? Not to worry, as OCZ has a product for you.
