OCZ VX Memory + DFI nForce4 = DDR533 at 2-2-2
by Wesley Fink on March 4, 2005 6:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
In the past year, we have seen lots of memory rated at DDR500, so you may wonder why we are reviewing a new DDR500 memory today when there are now a few rare modules rated as high as DDR600. The answer is pretty simple, since OCZ PC4000 VX Gold is the only memory that we have ever seen rated at DDR500 2-2-2. While it is rated at DDR500 at these extraordinary 2-2-2 timings, it also carries a very high rated voltage of 3.3V - far beyond what most motherboards can supply.
A quick check of orbs at FutureMark will show that this new VX is the fast darling of the extreme overclocking market. For those who wondered why DFI included voltages to 4.0V in their new nForce4 Ultra and SLI motherboards, the answer is OCZ VX memory. With VX needing voltages as high as 3.7V to really reach top performance at certain speeds, the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR and DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D are the first production motherboards to support the kind of extreme voltages needed by VX without modification.
With this promise of extraordinary DDR500 2-2-2 performance, we were very interested to see if this performance promise was real. Have we finally reached DDR500 with the fastest timings available? The answers in our benchmarks are very interesting.
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ozzimark - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
oh wait, i forgot this is also on a different motherboard.. are the nf4 pci-e boards really that much faster?Wesley Fink - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
#12 - The memory ran quite cool at 3.0V, and was even cool to about 3.2V. Above that, however, it started to get quite warm and I did mount a fan over the dimms at speeds above DDR500 to get higher stable overclocks. The VX ran fine at higher speeds, stable and no crashes, but the extra cooling gave a few FSB more in overclocking.#13 - The Value Ram roundup is in the works and will hopefully publish next week while I am out of the US.
ozzimark - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
umm, i have a problem with the video card benchmarks..go back to the 61.77 drivers you used for the rest of the benchmarks, vx at 2-3-2 shouldn't be that much faster than other ram at 2-2-2 at the same mhz.
Wesley Fink - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
#10 - I don't know how the wording got turned around, but the sentence has been corrected. It now reads:"As we raise the memory speed from 200 to 267 (DDR400 to DDR533), keeping the CPU speed constant, memory Read increases over 25% while memory Write over the same range shows just a 14% increase. That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory Read will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory Write dependent."
eetnoyer - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
Nice review, and great memory. But for those of us who aren't willing to piss away that much money for memory, are you still planning on the value memory round-up that was promised last summer?elrolio - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
my question is:how were the temps runnin that stuff at 3.6v? was it super hot? were case temps drastically higher? did you need active fan cooling over the ram? open test bed? was it all good in the hood?
thanks, just wondering...
AnnihilatorX - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
This ram rocks solid oO255 USD according to haelduksf
That's a bargain.
Again I am not in US and sometimes I just get depressed when I cannot find a single computer equipment as cheap as US in UK and HK.
slashbinslashbash - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
Typo on Page 4 (last sentence):"That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory write will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory write dependent."
Should be
"That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory write will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory read dependent."
I'm just wondering, though..... can there possibly be a (real-life, practical) application that writes to memory more than it reads from memory? I mean, what's the point of writing to memory, if the stored values are never accessed? Seems like a pretty inefficient program to me :)
Good article, I agree this is one of the few non-boring RAM reviews I've ever seen :)
Tiamat - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
Wow, the huge performance delta is incredible! Just WOWQuiksel - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link
normally, I hate reading memory reviews. Looking at the charts, I don't ever get excited about advances in the stuff, simply because you never see all that much of an improvement on the current king of performance.However, I must admit I was enjoying the article much more than I have ever have before. I guess when you see 10's of fps better, and there is such a marked improvement in performance over the competition, you can't help but want some of that action. ;)
now, if we can just see that kind of performance for the sub-$100 market ;)