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 PC3500 Dual Channel at its rated 433MHz, 2-3-3-7 settings. This is always a good first step just to make sure your ram is working as it should be.

Next up was actually lowering the timings to more aggressive settings, while leaving it at 433MHz. The ram managed to run at 433MHz, 2-2-2-6, but even by increasing the voltage to 2.8v, the system was not very stable. To run at those settings, we had to move the speed of the ram down to 420MHz, which isn't too bad. We also managed to run stable at 412, 2-2-2-5.

The last test was to determine the absolute highest overclock. We had varying levels of success, but we needed to move away from our aggressive timings. We adjusted our timings to a more conservative 2.5-3-3-7, increased the voltage to 2.8v.

A 235MHz (470MHz DDR) was the best we were able to manage while still maintaining stability. I did try the same overclock again, and lowered the ram back to CAS2, but while it got to the Windows logon screen, the PC just froze there. I also attempted 2.5-2-2-7, but again, the system crashed. In fact, the damage was so severe, a reinstall of Windows was required. Thank goodness for disk images.

Therefore, in summary, here's our results of our best, and most stable, overclocks:

	2-2-2-5	2-2-2-6	2.5-3-3-7
OCZ PC3500 EL	206MHz (412DDR)	210MHz (420DDR)	235MHz (470DDR)

Test Setup

Epox 8RDA+ nForce2: Athlon XP 2400+ (12x166: 1192MHz) provided by , 2 x 256MB OCZ Dual Channel EL Ram, ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, 120GB Western Digital SE 8MB Cache, Windows XP SP1, nForce 2 Unified Driver Package 2.0, ATi Catalyst 3.0

Test software will be:

SiSoft Sandra 2003
PC Mark 2002 Memory
PiFast
Quake 3
3D Mark 2001 SE
UT2003

We'll be presenting benchmarks at both the ram's stock speed (433MHz), as well as at the overclocked speeds, with the timings as shown earlier this page. Tests were done with the FSB and memory speed syncronous @ 166 (333DDR, 2-2-2-6), and asyncronous for 200MHz (400DDR) and up.

SiSoftware Sandra 2003

Although a synthetic benchmark, it's a popular one, freely available if you wish to make comparison benchmarks. We will be testing the memory speeds.

PC Mark 2002 - Memory

This is one synthetic benchmark that we here at VL don't exactly put a lot of emphasis on, but we're aware that many of our readers do use it.

As we should expect, memory performance increases with each overclock. At 470MHz (DDR), the OCZ Dual Channel Kit is doing a great job with the numbers.. Keep in mind that both SiSoft and PC Mark are not real world benchmarks, but they do give a scale in which to measure against.

PiFast

A good indicator of CPU/Motherboard performance is version 4.2, by Xavier Gourdon. We used a computation of 10000000 digits of Pi, Chudnovsky method, 1024 K FFT, and no disk memory.

The extra 69MHz shaves about 9 seconds from the calculations. PiFast is fairly memory intensive, so the extra speed makes quite a difference in the performance.