bldkc... Not really. Only people overclocking their CPUs to extreme highs are pushing memory at the 500+ MHz range. The fastest official speeds are still DDR400, and DDR2 will probably be necessary before we gain official support for DDR466 and/or DDR533. I'm just waiting for DDR666.... eeeevil! Oh, wait, they'll call it DDR667 to appease the Bible thumpers.
On a tangent, I'm an active Christian, and I find this "fear" of 666 to be rather absurd. "The number of the beast shall be six hundred sixty-six." Yeah, and the beast is apparently some computer part... or it would be if we had a 666 MHz CPU/RAM/Bus/whatever. Okay, on with life....
It wasn't long ago that we were asking the Processor Gods when they were going to catch up to the RAM Gods and use all that big bandwidth they were selling. Well here we are. Now we must pray that the Ram Gods will treat us kindly, and return the favor.
I will include some Athlon 64 results in an upcoming A64 board review. I did check compatibility with A64, which was excellent even on VIA K8T800, which can be very picky about memory and timings. Also took a brief look at A64 performance, and found best performance timings on A64 nF3 were 2.5-2-3-9 as mentioned in the review.
I was left wondering if you would see the same benefit from the enhanced bandwidth with Athlon Systems as you do with the Pentium 4 system that was used in the benchmarks.
I've gathered that the rule of thumb is that Pentium 4s enjoy all the memory bandwidth that you can feed them, while Athlon XP systems are less bandwidth starved and do better with the lowest latencies you can run.
So, I'm wondering if this new OCZ memory will be of most benefit to people running Pentium 4 systems, especially overclocked 800MHz systems, but less (if any advantage) to Athlon users. I also wonder if there is any difference in benefits between an Athlon 64 and the regular Athlon with this memory, for that matter.
These are the kind of practical questions I'm still left with after reading the article. On the other hand, the article gets high praise for bringing this new memory to our attention.
Pumkinierre - Our memory test bed is the Asus P4C800-E, and we have not tested EB on the Abit IC7. However, OCZ Tech Support tells us they achieve even better benchmark results with EB on the Abit IC7. I will try to provide a link to their test results on the IC7 later today.
Yeah well I have had OCZ platinum 3200 o'clocked to 3500 (2-2-3-7) for 9months now and noticed it slowly degrading. I used to pass Memtest86 at 220MHz with Game Accelerator (GAT) F1 (Abit IC7-G) but now I have to switch off the GAT at 216MHz to successfully run Memtest86. At F1, DDR Voltage is 2.7V otherwise 2.6V. I notice the mem. modules are quite warm (even hot) so maybe I need extra cooling as the DIMMS are out of the normal air circulation at the top of the case. And its been a hot summer.
It seems crazy that memory modules that are at least 12 months old (BH5/BH6) are still the best performers in the 400 to 433MHz range and even higher (original OCZ3700 gold) given the very fast ascent from 266 to 400 at low latencies. Lets hope these Hynix DDR550 modules cut the mustard.
I cant run F1 higher than CAS2 at present (and Street Racer not at all) although others in posts say they do. So finally Wesley, will the EB technology modules run F1 or Street Racer at 466-500Mhz.
It might have been interesting to set CAS latency on the other modules to 2.5 to see how much this 'EB' helps vs. non-EB ram at identical timings.
This article also simply seems to show (again) that OCZ memory, of any sort, is just plain good. Recall the article on the FX-53, wherein the 2.4Ghz chip with OCZ ram performed more than 200Mhz better than the 2.2Ghz FX-51 with Mushkin RAM... this even though the Mushkin had better timings.
Were I shopping for high performance RAM, my shopping would begin and end with OCZ... it'd just be a matter of choosing which OCZ modules.
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Pumpkinierre - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Still waiting for my OCZ IC7 link WesleyTrogdorJW - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
bldkc... Not really. Only people overclocking their CPUs to extreme highs are pushing memory at the 500+ MHz range. The fastest official speeds are still DDR400, and DDR2 will probably be necessary before we gain official support for DDR466 and/or DDR533. I'm just waiting for DDR666.... eeeevil! Oh, wait, they'll call it DDR667 to appease the Bible thumpers.On a tangent, I'm an active Christian, and I find this "fear" of 666 to be rather absurd. "The number of the beast shall be six hundred sixty-six." Yeah, and the beast is apparently some computer part... or it would be if we had a 666 MHz CPU/RAM/Bus/whatever. Okay, on with life....
bldkc - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
It wasn't long ago that we were asking the Processor Gods when they were going to catch up to the RAM Gods and use all that big bandwidth they were selling. Well here we are. Now we must pray that the Ram Gods will treat us kindly, and return the favor.Wesley Fink - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Adul -I will include some Athlon 64 results in an upcoming A64 board review. I did check compatibility with A64, which was excellent even on VIA K8T800, which can be very picky about memory and timings. Also took a brief look at A64 performance, and found best performance timings on A64 nF3 were 2.5-2-3-9 as mentioned in the review.
RyanVM - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
And what if due to past transgressions, many (including myself) still don't trust anything OCZ puts their name on?Adul - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Any chance to get some test results on a Athlon 64 wes?grunjee - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Where the heck can I get some of this stuff??? Been looking and haven't been able to find any.Great review btw Wesley.
bigtoe33 - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
I have an unbuffered available on bleedinedge forum.http://www.bleedinedge.com/forum/showthread.php?t=...
this shows turbo enabled on an IC7.
Spacecomber - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
I was left wondering if you would see the same benefit from the enhanced bandwidth with Athlon Systems as you do with the Pentium 4 system that was used in the benchmarks.I've gathered that the rule of thumb is that Pentium 4s enjoy all the memory bandwidth that you can feed them, while Athlon XP systems are less bandwidth starved and do better with the lowest latencies you can run.
So, I'm wondering if this new OCZ memory will be of most benefit to people running Pentium 4 systems, especially overclocked 800MHz systems, but less (if any advantage) to Athlon users. I also wonder if there is any difference in benefits between an Athlon 64 and the regular Athlon with this memory, for that matter.
These are the kind of practical questions I'm still left with after reading the article. On the other hand, the article gets high praise for bringing this new memory to our attention.
Wesley Fink - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Pumkinierre -Our memory test bed is the Asus P4C800-E, and we have not tested EB on the Abit IC7. However, OCZ Tech Support tells us they achieve even better benchmark results with EB on the Abit IC7. I will try to provide a link to their test results on the IC7 later today.
Pumpkinierre - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Yeah well I have had OCZ platinum 3200 o'clocked to 3500 (2-2-3-7) for 9months now and noticed it slowly degrading. I used to pass Memtest86 at 220MHz with Game Accelerator (GAT) F1 (Abit IC7-G) but now I have to switch off the GAT at 216MHz to successfully run Memtest86. At F1, DDR Voltage is 2.7V otherwise 2.6V. I notice the mem. modules are quite warm (even hot) so maybe I need extra cooling as the DIMMS are out of the normal air circulation at the top of the case. And its been a hot summer.It seems crazy that memory modules that are at least 12 months old (BH5/BH6) are still the best performers in the 400 to 433MHz range and even higher (original OCZ3700 gold) given the very fast ascent from 266 to 400 at low latencies. Lets hope these Hynix DDR550 modules cut the mustard.
I cant run F1 higher than CAS2 at present (and Street Racer not at all) although others in posts say they do. So finally Wesley, will the EB technology modules run F1 or Street Racer at 466-500Mhz.
johnsonx - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
It might have been interesting to set CAS latency on the other modules to 2.5 to see how much this 'EB' helps vs. non-EB ram at identical timings.This article also simply seems to show (again) that OCZ memory, of any sort, is just plain good. Recall the article on the FX-53, wherein the 2.4Ghz chip with OCZ ram performed more than 200Mhz better than the 2.2Ghz FX-51 with Mushkin RAM... this even though the Mushkin had better timings.
Were I shopping for high performance RAM, my shopping would begin and end with OCZ... it'd just be a matter of choosing which OCZ modules.
Cybercat - Wednesday, April 7, 2004 - link
Well....this is new....and impressive.