Overclocking and comparisons
Memory reviews, in isolation, don't really tell us that much. What we need to do is compare the OCZ module with other high performance modules from various manufacturers. Enter the following:
At the top of the above picture we have 256MB of Mushkin PC3200 enhanced DDR. Next is the current king, the Corsair XMS3500 C2, a 512MB module. Lastly, a 256MB module of Corsair's XMS3200 C2 completes the line-up. Before comparing them directly to the OCZ module, I feel it necessary to state that the modules pictured above were benchmarked at least 2 months ago. Current yields may have well have improved in the interim period.
The method I chose for comparison was to use was to specify 3 sets of timings and see how far each module could go with 2.84v voltage. After all, memory that natively runs at DDR400, or above, is enthusiast-only territory. I ran Memtest for 5 minutes each time to ensure basic stability at each step. The potency of the processor and the 3:4 ratio meant that memory MHz wasn't a problem until around 240MHz. (180FSB)
Firstly, I tried super-strict timings of 2-5-2-2 enhanced. No module has ever liked these on the test motherboard.
Pretty good here.
This was especially pleasing. My preferred memory timings of 2-7-2-2 Enhanced.
I'm pretty sure that the DDR-480 speeds attained by the OCZ module were limited by the motherboard. It also managed to do DDR-470 (235MHz @ CAS2) without any problems. See the CPU-Z screenshot below.
Not bad, eh ?.