The Memories
OCZ VX is unique in being the only memory available that is rated at 2-2-2 timings at DDR500. The memory is based on Winbond memory chips, most likely CH5 die. The downside is that this level of performance requires a rated 3.3V of memory voltage. The only production motherboards to supply this level of voltage are the new DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR and the lower cost sister, DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. We reviewed these motherboards in
DFI nForce4: SLI and Ultra for Mad Overclockers. We also compared the DFI nF4 SLI-DR to other nF4 SLI boards in
nForce4 SLI Roundup: Painful and Rewarding.
The other 3 memories were chosen for comparison because they were top performers in our memory tests and they were representative of a memory chip or class of memory.
The OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2 is our Reference test memory. It has been a consistent top performer in Athlon 64 tests and is based on Samsung TCCD chips on a Brainpower PCB. This means that performance of the OCZ should be comparable to the similarly configured G. Skill, Corsair, Mushkin, PDP Patriot, PQI and Geil TCCD, which are generally rated at DDR400, but often perform to DDR600 or higher on the Athlon 64 nF4 platform.
The Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25A is also based on Samsung TCCD and the Brainpower PCB, but it is TCCD specifically binned for high-speed performance. This memory is representative of the performance of the best TCCD rated at DDR500 to DDR550. This memory is not always capable of 2-2-2 performance at DDR400, but the mid- to high-end memory timings are usually very good for TCCD-based memory.
Our final contender is Crucial Ballistix PC3200. The Ballistix is based on Micron chips, and the performance curves are similar to the now-discontinued OCZ EB memory, which was also based on similar Micron chips. After we completed testing, we learned that DFI had been working with Crucial to improve performance of Crucial Ballistix on the DFI nF4 motherboards. Therefore, for best performance of Ballistix, make sure that you are using BIOS version 310 (March 10, 2005) or later.
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AnnihilatorX - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
This memory rocks. Can someone please do me a favour of buying this memory for me from newegg, ship it to me (UK/HK) and I'll pay him cost + postage + a bit extra via paypal. Thanks very much. It's a bit annoying since you cannot buy this ram from HK. No suppliers.Just e-mail me at annihilator@x-annihilation.com
Thanks again
ozzimark - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
*notes that it's 245mhz at 2.5-2-2-10ozzimark - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
#28my ballistix can go to 245mhz with 2.7v before my memory controller starts hating me and having some serious stability issues. though they seem to scale nicely with voltage, i can't really test it out, because even at 3-4-4-10 with 2T, i can't get over 250mhz.
n yusef - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
AnandTech should do a review of the TwinMOS UTT chips that cost $150 less than the VX. I bought VX before I heard about the TwinMOS stuff, but my friend is doing 2-2-2-6 at 255MHz with 3.4 volts at 1:1. My VX can do 260MHz, but I would give 5MHz RAM/FSB bandwidth and 50MHz core for $150 any day.JoKeRr - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
one more thing, I've heard from many ppl that they're running their BH5 sticks (2x512) to 250 2-2-2-5 with like 3.1 to 3.2V, if u still do have some old BH5, would it be possible to lay a show down between bh5 and VX?? I think I saw a guy on xtremeresouce /or maybe system doing ddr293 with 4V with mushkin BH5 at 2-2-2-5 timing, that's crazy.JoKeRr - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
How does the Ballistix react to voltage?? I've heard that Tccd doesn't react very well, but the old EB stuff could do 2.5-2-2-5 at ddr500 once u give it 3.1V. Could you plz try that and see how the Ballistix scale with voltage plz?? thankQ in advance.JoKeRr - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
Rapsven - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
23-If you are trying to get 2 gigabytes to do those speeds in tandem with the CPU, you'll have problems. Try using the regular 2*512 instead of 4*512 and see you can hit 250 fsb at 2-2-2.
Or ask the OCZ guys, they're very helpful.
ozzimark - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
hmm, my bad, the [img] tags don't work here. just copy and paste that link :)and since it seems that some posts have been deleted, my above comment is in response to #13
ozzimark - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link
#14-that's quite interesting. maybe the spd's on the ram sticks are changing important values other than the cas, trcd, trp? i know that there are a lot of values that effect ram performance other than those three. i actually went through most of them on the dfi board, and found that lower isn't always better, similar to tras. though with that you said, i may have to go through and re-tweak my setup with the write benchmark in mind too. i never really gave it much thought assuming that it would scale similarily to read bandwidth.
also, i noticed some inconsistancies at various multipliers. i tested at two speeds, 230mhz (near the limit of my memory controller) at 2.5-2-2-10, and 200mhz at 2-2-2-10. (i use 2x512mb of crucial ballistix)
the only thing changed between runs is the cpu mutliplier. the ram is 1:1, and everything else remains constant.
[img]http://www.freewebs.com/cfeclipse/latency.PNG[/img]