As I never had , I've never heard much about their products except for some of their past history. Today I'll try to present you OCZ in a different point of view because in spite of their past, that's what it is, the past.
What is really hard to do on the market these days is to make your product distinguish itself from the rest of the competition. The market is full of different kinds of ram, and they are all fast. What I am looking for is not your standard ram. Ineed something that looks different, feels different, and help push the hell out of my machine. So OCZ will push it to the limit? Let's see...
Specifications
512Mb kit (2x 256Mb) and 1Gb kit (2x 512Mb) available
ULN Technology
Based on OCZ brand EL DDR IC (4.5 ns)
CL 2-2-3-5 1T
200Mhz FSB / 400 Mhz
Dual Channel Optimised
Rated to handle up to 2.8 volts
Retail packaging
184 pin DIMM
So what's so special about the Platinum? Here's what they have to say about it on their site…
As a result of the increasing demand for high performance dual channel optimized DDR RAM OCZ have released their Platinum Edition PC3200 Series. The Platinum Edition PC3200 modules are hand tested and matched across a variety of platforms to achieve highest possible performance and compatibility.
- Dual Channel Optimized - hand tested in dual channel motherboards for best possible performance and compatibility - suitable for Intel i865/i875 and many other dual channel chipsets.
Basically, they are saying that the ram is compatible with a lot motherboards under standard Dual Channel usage, at the best performance possible. Granted, if you have a crap motherboard you'll just crash your pc by attempting overcooking or doing any unusual stuff, but on the other hand if you have a decent motherboard you will be entitled to have hours of fun trying to get the maximum performance of this ram.
Dual Channel
What exactly is Dual Channel? That means that a motherboard, such as the nForce2, uses Twin Bank mode, and requires two memory modules plugged into the appointed DIMM slots in order to enable Dual Channel DDR where each module controlled by a separate channel of the memory controller. Hubert covered this quite extensively in past reviews, so let's see what he has to say...
The nForce2, Intel's 865PE and 875P, as well as Intel's Granite Bay are DualDDR platforms. What this means is that for the best performance out of, let's say, your nForce2, you are better off with two 256MB sticks of ram, rather than going with one stick of 512MB. DualDDR is effectively a 128-bit interface with two 64-bit controllers working together. Latency is lowered as well by this method. Think of this scenario: The first controller can be gathering information, while the second controller is publishing it. Basically, both hands are working independently of one another, while still working towards the same end result. Therefore, latency is effectively cut in half.
OCZ EL DDR PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Kit
When the ram modules arrived they were individually packaged, with instructions, and arrived in good condition. Here's OCZ's product description…
OCZ Enhanced Latency PC-3200 Dual Channel optimized kits memory using state of the art ULN technology are capable of achieving outrageous speeds of up to 400 MHz at CL2. These kits are optimized for use on motherboards using the most popular Dual Channel chipsets like the Canterwood, Springdale, Nforce2 etc. Each module is hand tested and matched across a variety of motherboards to insure flawless performance on any motherboard. Platinum heat spreader to ensure best possible heat dissipation.
The futuristic look and the silver color of the ram is really nice, and it gives you the impression that you have already gained 200 mhz just by looking at it! Kinda like adding a "Type-R" sticker on a Dodge Neon gives you 10 mental horsepower. Ok, maybe that's just us.
The weight even surprise me more with the nice copper heatsinks. At this point I'm able to say they put a lot of work on this kit to make it at least look better.
I am going to admit that these are high quality spreaders, but as Hubert also says, the jury is still out on these things as being effective enough to improve your overclocking adventures with ram. We're not knocking OCZ's decision to add copper spreaders, as it will cool the memory chips down a little, but past experiences here at VL have shown that spreaders don't really do much for overclocking. That being said, they are included with the ram, so it's not like you have to go out and buy your own.
Not much of indication were found on the memory label just the size of the module and the rated speed (3200), and the module size. After installation, it seems that the default SPD settings are 400MHz, 2-4-4-9. This is what was reported in the BIOS of my ABIT NF7-S, though setting it to 2-2-3-5 wasn't a problem.
Overclocking
was used to test for stability thoughout our overclocking 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 PC3200 Dual Channel at its rated 400MHz, 2-2-3-5 T1 settings. This is always a good first step just to make sure your ram is working as it should be. Remember that the specs on the site say 2-2-3-5 and my SPD settings are 2-4-4-9, but the two settings passed the test.
Everything was running well so we will go up 1 MHZ at a time until we reached our maximum overclock. As we approached the higher speeds, we had freezing issue, and we've had to increase the memory voltage up 2.7v to maintain stability. At 2-2-3-5, we managed a maximum over clock of 230MHz (460MHz DDR), but the ram fail the Memtest86 tests. Clocking back down to 22MHz (440MHz DDR) resolved the problem.
I had trouble with CPU-Z software didn't want to detect my ram. We downloaded old versions and new versions, but for whatever reason, no dice. So I have included few charts to show my results...
200MHZ(400)2-2-3-5 (left), 230 MHZ(460) 2-2-3-5 (right)
