System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium 4 2266MHz S478 Northwood CPU (17x133FSB)
- ABIT IT7-MAX i845E run in official DDR266 and asynchronous mode (1.33x FSB)
- OCZ Technology 256MB EL PC-3500 memory
Other components
- ATi Radeon 9700 Pro (324/320)
- WD 120JB 120GB hard drive
- Liteon 16x DVD
- Samcheer 420w PSU
- Samsung 181T TFT monitor
- Alpha 8942 + YSTech fan
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- Intel 4.00.109 chipset drivers
- Intel application accelerator drivers
- Plutonium XP 8.1 Radeon Drivers (based on ATI CATALYST build 6166)
- Pifast v41
- Virtual Dub 1.4.10 DVD encoding, DivX 4.10 CODEC
- 3DMark 2001SE
- UT2003 Demo
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30
Notes
Modules rated at PC-3500 (217MHz) speeds are intrinsically hard to benchmark. No platform supports this speed natively.
What I've chosen to do, therefore, is to pick a platform where changes in bandwidth will be meaningful. I've chosen to go with the i845E chipset and the ABIT IT7-MAX in particular, because it allows me to fix the AGP / PCI speeds and gives me up to 3v of voltage to play with.
Using an overclockable 2.26GHz Northwood, one that has seen 3.1GHz with ease on air, I'll be running it at 162.5FSB (2762MHz). Running the memory synchronously will show us the benefits of running PC2700 RAM (well, a bit slower, actually), and running asynchronously (3:4 ratio, 217MHz) should show us what the just what the OCZ can do for us. The quad-pumped nature of the P4 will allow us to readily demonstrate what effect faster memory and timings have on common applications. Remember, the CPU speed will remain constant at 2762MHz. To put it into numbers, I'll be running the following combinations:
2.26GHz @ 2762.5MHz (162.5FSB). OCZ EL PC-3500 @ 162.5MHz (DDR-325) @ 2-7-3-3 enhanced timings. - This combination should show us what decent PC2700 memory would do in our benchmarks.
2.26GHz @ 2762.5MHz (162.5FSB). OCZ EL PC-3500 @ 217MHz (DDR-433.3) @ 2-7-3-3 enhanced timings. - This combination should show us the true worth of DDR-434 memory. The timings are the same as above. The module is run at 2.6v. The extra bandwidth should benchmark better.
2.26GHz @ 2762.5MHz (162.5FSB). OCZ EL PC-3500 @ 217MHz (DDR-433.3) @ 2-7-2-2 enhanced timings. - This combination should show us the OCZ in its element. I've tightened the RAM timings down to 2-7-2-2 enhanced. To achieve this speed and timings, I've bumped up the voltage to 2.8v. The extra bandwidth and stricter timings should make it a powerful benchmarker.
To ensure basic operation at its stated speed, I ran the system-hurting Prime 95 torture test. Here's how it shaped up at 2.6v.
With an in-built speed of PC2700 (no faster JEDEC speeds at the moment), the OCZ module comfortably runs at its stated speed.