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OCZ PC4200 EL Platinum Edition - PAGE 3
Tom Karpik - Friday, January 28th, 2005

As was the case with yesterday's review, OCZ has rated this RAM at its highest stable clock speed. The rating calls for 262.5 MHz (525 MHz DDR), and we were able to stably run at 263-2.5-3-3-8. A clock speed of 264 MHz caused errors in MemTest86.

A very noteworthy bonus is the fact that we were able to use a 1T timing at these settings, unlike the Ballistix memory.

Here are the Sandra scores for 263-2.5-4-4-8-1T, as well as 250-2.5-4-4-8-1T for direct comparison to Ballstix at 2T:




And here are the RightMark results -




The proof is in the pudding: CAS latency is the measurement of yesterday -- the ability to run at 1T is definitely what any enthusiast should be aiming for in their memory. These scores at 263 MHz are nothing short of amazing.

In SiSoft Sandra alone, the OCZ memory managed to pull in ~1000 MB/s more than the competition, while only running 13 MHz faster. The 1T timings combined with the extra bump in clock speed definitely have an impact here.

Looking over the RightMark results, it is also obvious that 1T has a considerable impact on overall performance. At 250 MHz, latencies were ~3 ns lower with the OCZ memory than with the Ballistix at 2T, and ~4.5 ns lower at 263 MHz. Real memory bandwidth was around 300 MB/s faster.

Loosening the timings and dropping to 2T timings allowed the OCZ to hit 274 Mhz before errors would once again pop up in Memtest (in this case it was actually a hard lock.)

In short, if you are purchasing memory for your Athlon 64 system, your purchasing decision should come down to whether or not that memory can run at 1T at your target memory clock. OCZ's PC4200 EL PE didn't break a sweat running at 1T at 263 MHz.

OCZ has done a tremendous job with this memory. Memory like this should be the holy grail for every hardcore overclocker out there -- being able to run at 263 MHz with timings of 2.5-3-3-8-1T brings a level of performance that was only dreamt about a short while ago. At the above mentioned settings, memory bandwidth scores in SiSoft Sandra were just a hair short of 6000 MB/s, which was, once again, only a dream a while ago.

Props to OCZ Technology, for providing us with the fastest RAM that we have tested to date. We are giving the OCZ PC4200 EL Platinum Edition our Editor's Choice award, for excellence in performance, stability, and looks.

What's Next?

Article Index

1.Introduction and the Memory
2.Benchmark Setup and Benchmarks
3.Overclocking and Conclusion

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