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Value RAM Roundup: Computing On a Budget

by Wesley Fink on April 11, 2005 4:26 PM EST
102 Comments | Add A Comment
102 Comments

OCZ PC3200 Premier

In the past two years, OCZ has moved from relative obscurity to becoming one of the most widely recognized names in enthusiast products. Today, OCZ markets power supplies, heat sinks, memory voltage boosters, and thermal compounds, but OCZ is still best known for their enthusiast memory. Recently, OCZ has also been quite innovative in new product introductions, including products like our current RAM Speed champ, OCZ VX, which requires a very non-standard 3.5 to 3.6V to really shine.

What many forget is that like Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, and other full-line memory companies, OCZ has a very large line of value products. The Premier Series is a Value line, and the PC3200 Premier is a typical Value product, with a web selling price as low as $121 at mWave.

OCZ uses cheaper packaging for their Premier line than their high-end products, but that fits the target, which is low cost. Like Mushkin, OCZ chose to include heatspreaders on their Value product; in this case, copper-colored heatspreaders. The Premier test DIMMs came as a matched pair of 512MB DIMMs in a 1GB kit.

PC3200 Premier is built with PSC memory chips, a Taiwan company that provides chips for value products from several memory manufacturers.

Specifications

OCZ rates their PC3200 Premier at the more aggressive CAS 2.5 timings at DDR400 and stock voltage.

 OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) Memory Specifications
Number of DIMMs & Banks 2 DS
DIMM Size
Total Memory		 512 MB
1GB
Rated Timings 2.5-3-3-7 at DDR400
SPD (Auto) Timings 2.5-3-3-7
Rated Voltage 2.6V

Test Results

The OCZ PC3200 Premier is the first Value RAM we have tested that reaches DDR480, our next test point on the 2.4GHz ratios. Our samples actually booted as high as DDR500, but memtest86, Super Pi and games were not stable beyond DDR480, regardless of voltage.

OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) - 2 x 512Mb Double-Bank
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz Memory
Speed		 Memory Timings
& Voltage		 Quake3
fps		 Sandra UNBuffered Sandra Standard
Buffered		 Super PI 2M places
(time in sec)		 Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps
12x200 400 DDR 2.5-3-2-6
2.6V 1T		 535.0 INT 2637
FLT 2826		 INT 6072
FLT 6025		 83 112.4
11x218 436 DDR 2.5-3-3-6
2.7V 1T		 538.5 INT 2803
FLT 2969		 INT 6481
FLT 6410		 82 113.0
10x240 480 DDR 2.5-3-3-6
2.9V 1T		 546.6 INT 2901
FLT 3136		 INT 6708
FLT 6626		 81 114.7
11x240
(2.64GHz)		 Highest CPU/Mem Performance 2.5-3-3-6
2.9V 1T		 586.0 INT 2976
FLT 3214		 INT 7083
FLT 7007		 75 124.1
To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.

The Premier actually did a bit better than specified at DDR400 with stable 2.5-3-2-6 timings. It is also worth noting that Premier was stable with CAS 2.5 timings all the way to the memory speed limit of DDR480. This is particularly outstanding performance for a memory that actually sells for $121.

Aida 32 is now available as Everest Home Edition, a free download from www.lavalys.com. Everest has been very useful in measuring read/write performance and memory latency.

OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) 2x512Mb Double-Bank
Everest 1.51
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz Memory Speed Memory Timings
& Voltage		 Everest READ
MB/s		 Everest WRITE
MB/s		 Everest Latency
ns
12x200 400 DDR 2.5-3-2-6
2.6V 1T		 5795 1948 47.1
11x218 436 DDR 2.5-3-3-6
2.7V 1T		 6122 1998 44.6
10x240 480 DDR 2.5-3-3-6
2.9V 1T		 6661 2217 44.3
11x240
(2.64GHz)		 Highest CPU/Mem Performance 2.5-3-3-6
2.9V 1T		 6668 2710 40.3

With OCZ Premier covering a broader range of memory speeds from 400 to 480, there is more potential to see the true impact of memory speed on performance. With memory timings at a consistent 2.5-3-3 and CPU speed at a constant 2.4GHz, any performance deltas are the result of true performance differences. As we move from 400 to 480 - a 20% speed increase - memory read improves by 15%, write improves by almost 40%, and latency drops by about 17%.

However, these improvements in synthetic memory benchmarks are not reflected by similar improvements in benchmarks with real games. Improving memory speed by 20% - from 400 to 480 - at the same CPU speed improves gaming performance by just 2% to 3%. Clearly, we are getting a better performance increase than this in real-world performance with faster CPU speed. You can see this in the 10% CPU speed increase from 10x240 to 11x240 at the same memory timings. This 10% CPU Speed increase improves gaming FPS by about 8%.

Mushkin EM Series PC3200 OCZ PC3200 Value Series: "Value VX"
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  • LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link

    Thanks for a good article. I usually post response for constructive criticism, but I ought to balance that out more. The Value VX OCZ RAM was particularly interesting and worth knowing about.

  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link

    #79 - I double-checked the part number on the OCZ "Value BH5" and corrected the Part Number on page 2. Thanks for pointing this out.

  • ericeames - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link

    I belive that the idea of this roundup was good but it has some flaws:

    I dont think that getting memories directly from the manufacturer is a good idea. I know that this is how it "works" it makes the result less credible!

    The overclocking possibilities is not THAT important altough it should not be neglected.


    Compairing them with better brands was a good idea, it makes the results relative.

    /
    Eric

  • srstudios - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link

    Wesley, it seems that the part number is incorrect for the BH-5 OCZ shown on page two.

    http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/memory/ocz_e...

    ELDCGE-K for BH-5 2-2-2

    Nice article though, thanks for all the great work!

  • srstudios - Wednesday, April 13, 2005 - link

  • xsilver - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link

    another thing I have to clear up..... I don't mind extreme voltages used on a "performance" review but this was supposed to be a "VALUE" roundup.... so in this situation extreme voltages may not be warranted

  • xsilver - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link

    #62 wesley... you continiued analogy is flawed....
    the thing you forget to mention is that the ferrari only smokes the chevy IF and ONLY IF the racing alcohol is used (3.4v) and the racing alchohol is only available to people who buy say brand X tyres (dfi board).... so in essence you cannot separate the dfi board and the vx + bh5 ram.... they must be used together.....
    I stand by my statement that this "review" smells a bit like an advertisment for dfi and ocz

    #74
    I thought it was generally accepted that you can now get the same performance with 1:1 overclocking on loose cas3 timings as a lower mhz with tighter cas 2 timings.... so the need to push the ram to the highest mhz is unnessessary to get the best performance

  • JustAnAverageGuy - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link

    Poor Wesley.

    The crowds can never be pleased.

  • AtaStrumf - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link

    ChineseDemocracyGNR's post reminded me of one more thing that is sooooo... wrong with this article. 240MHz is nowhere near enough for 1:1 OC-ing of A64s, because unlike you, we don't have 2,4 GHz (4000+, 939, 12x multiplier) chips which cost a fortune, but rather 1,8/2,0 GHz (3000+/3200+, 939, 9x/10x multiplier) chips which cost much less. So if you do the math that is 2160/2400 MHz, which is not exacly the limit, at least not anymore, now that the 90 nm Venice chips are just around the corner.

  • AtaStrumf - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 - link

    I noticed that typo too Olaf van der Spek, but more importantly this very same Transcend RAM gave me quite a bit of trouble and I would not recommend it to anyone with an A64. I was getting strange errors on my ABIT KV8 K8T800Pro, A64 3200+ S754, 2x512 transend RAM combo, like consistent NERO Identity check failures after a DVD burn. Really annoying!!! There were other stuff too, but the point is after I switched to TwinMOS Twister 3700, PQI OEM 3200, Geil Value 3200, Crucial Ballistix 3200 CL2 (best RAM I tested so far), Corsair XMS 3700 (crap RAM BTW), APACER 4000 (TCCD chips; on A64 won't run with any other stick, eg. 1x512 Ballistix + 1x512 APACER, system only sees 512MB of APACER RAM; checked with many different memories) or any other memory for that matter, everything worked just fine, so there is something really strange wrong with Transcend RAM so I strongly recommend that all A64 users avoid it like a plague.

    I agree that the only good choice in this roundup was a OCZ VX Value. You shouldn't let manufacturers pick the RAM you test. Ask us what we want to see tested, we'll have plenty of ideas. The ones I'd like to see are Corsair Value (which I know is crap, I just want you to show in Anand's recent blog entry AT's much advertised backbone and prove to Corsair that you will not take their BS excuse and will still test their RAM, even if they don't want you to, because we, the readers, come first), then GEIL Value 3200 isn't all that bad, then TwinMOS Speed Premium, PQI 3200 OEM, Geil pc4000 Ultra Platinum isn't that expensive either.

    And please stop at 2,9V, because that is as high as most are willing to go, and don't test more that CAS 2.5 and 1T.
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