OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 Value Pro is designed to offer mainstream
(read average) users excellent performance, reliability, and quality
at a lower price point. Now, being hardware junkies and overclocking
gurus the 1st thing you'll think is "how far can I push it?
Can I save some cash, tweak it and stretch the all mighty dollar
even further?" Well hopefully we'll be able to answer some
of those questions in the next few pages.
The first thing many of you will notice is the timings, not the
greatest but remember this is "Value" RAM, we'll look
into some better timings later on in the testing procedure. Another
thing to note, especially if you are familiar with OCZ's performance
memory, the value series does not have EVP (Extended voltage protection)
so in a nutshell, if you bump up the voltage and fry it, your
on your own.
Packaging is your standard plastic clamshell with some features
and specs on the back of the card. Personally I like the plain
Jane packaging, spend the money on development not on making the
box look pretty.
The RAM itself has copper heat spreaders with
the embossed OCZ logo, as well as a sticker letting you know
what type of RAM it is and the timings.
The RAM I'll be comparing this to is Kingston
Hyper X PC5400. I know, doesn't seem like a fair
comparison but I'll be slowing the Kingston down to be on par
with the OCZ. Don't worry, I'll also be overclocking the OCZ
and see how far we cant take it.
Test setup consists of Intel P4 3.4 (LGA 775),
Foxconn NF4SLI7AA-8EKRS2 motherboard, 2 x WD 74GB Raptors, 1
60GB Maxtor HDD, ASUS
dual layer DVDRW, Lite-ON DVDROM, HIS X800XL, Cooler
Master 550W PSU.
I'll be using Sisoft Sandra's memory benchmark
to test each type of RAM at different speeds, FSB speeds tested
according to BIOS were 533, 560, 600 and 675. I did not do a
lot of heavy tweaking, at default timings no voltage adjustments
were required for either brand of RAM.
Before I started benchmarking I wanted to see
if I could do something about the 4-4-4-8 timings, after a few
minutes of poking around in the BIOS I got it down to 3-3-3-6
at 1.9V At default speed of 533MHz the OCZ was rock solid stable
at those timings, granted not a huge improvement, but an improvement
none the less, and with minimal increase to the voltage. However,
overclocking was limited with the tighter timings, so for the
overclocking tests I went back to default timings, and in the
case of the last test at 667MHz the timings were 4-4-4-10 in
the case of OCZ and 4-4-4-12 for the Kingston.
At 533, the default rated speed for the OCZ things
are pretty much dead even, the OCZ has a slight lead in Int
which could be due to the tighter timings.
At higher speeds we start to see the payoff for
the tighter timing, OCZ increases the lead even further. I expected
the Kingston to come out on top due to it being underclocked
and having more headroom, but the results say just the opposite.
At 600 the OCZ still has a sizable lead over the
Kingston and shows no signs of slowing down, at this point I
decided to run memtest for an hour just to check on stability
and was glad to see no errors after an hour of memtest. The
heatspreaders were definitely warming up at this speed due to
the constant pounding from memtest, so some type of active cooling
might be a good idea.
At a FSB setting of 675 we hit 667MHz on the RAM,
taking this OCZ PC2 4200 up to PC 5400 speeds. Timings on the
OCZ were at 4-4-4-10 compared to the Kingston's 4-4-4-12 and
a default voltage of 1.8V. I again ran memtest at this point
to check the stability of this overclock and after 1 hour received
two error, I checked the temps on the heatspreaders and they
were VERY hot to the touch so I rigged an 80mm fan over the
RAM and ran memtest again for just over an hour. With the addition
of the fan memtest ran error free. I decided to stop at this
point, this RAM had already impressed me and anything more would
just be overkill.
Just to do a little further testing I fired up
my current favorite game Battlefield 2. Any of you familiar
with BF2 know how much of a memory hog it is. I figured this
would be a good real world test to see how well the RAM handled
this huge overclock. I played through 6 rounds of BF2 with no
problems, I didn't remove the rigged cooling set up I had in
place but I'm pretty sure without the additional cooling I would
have run into a few errors.
Conclusion: What can I say, this is some
serious RAM, you can find it online for less than $100 for a
1GB kit. With some mild tweaking you got from some decent priced
PC 4200 value RAM to some REALLY decent priced PC5400. Every
once in a while a product comes along that gives you WAY more
bang for the buck than you expect, like the ti series NVIDIA
cards, the JIUHB XP 1700 and the ABIT NF7-s motherboard. You
mention any of those products to an enthusiast and it brings
a smile to their faces.
Some creative tweaking of the voltage, timings
etc., paired up with the serious overclockability of this RAM
make it an incredible deal.
Pros: Cost, amazing overclockability, stability,
can tighten timings slightly
Cons: Default timing is slower than what
we are seeing on other (more costly) RAM
Final Thoughts: In most cases I wouldn't
recommend "budget" or "value" hardware of
any kind, to anyone. The saying you get what you pay for is
more true with hardware than just about anything. In the case
of this RAM I would recommend it to anyone looking to upgrade
on the cheap. 1GB of dual channel RAM for about $100 bucks may
seem like it's to good to be true, but in this case it's not.
