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OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 Gold GX XTC 2GB


Date
: 02/5/06 – 01:08:06 AM

Author
:

Category
: Memory

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: OCZ Technology

Price
: $247.44 after $25.00 rebate (Newegg)

Our last review featuring OCZ Technology was on their OCZ 1024-3200 Gold Edition XTC kit. Today, we get to feature another kit from OCZ and also from the XTC family!

Recently, OCZ has been pushing the XTC lineup and we've seen a few DDR2 kits sporting the new fancy heatspreaders. The aim was to reduce the overall temperature and, in my mind, go for a greater overclock!

While Jody had the chance to focus his work on the 1GB kit, I will be looking at the 2GB PC4000 Gold Edition that was developed with gamer's distinctive needs in mind. In addition to the memory benchmarks, I'll also be testing this kit with BattleField 2, Half Life 2 and Doom 3; the exact titles OCZ says are memory intensive. Let's first take a look at how OCZ delivers these bad boys…

Page 2 : Package & Contents

With the exception of the Ultra Products 2*512MB PC3200 memory kit that came in a very sweet Mahogany box, they all now come in standard blister packs.

On the front of the box we see a very large OCZ product specifications sticker attached to the heat spreader.

I agree with Jody's statement in saying OCZ should come up with a new method of attaching the specifications label as this significantly hinders the natural convection abilities of the XTC heatspreader.

As you can guess, the packing for the blister pack is OCZ's generic print out. They must have crates of these at the packaging facility. More importantly, it means this and all OCZ kits are
backed by OCZ's lifetime warranty
– not limited warranty,
lifetime
.

Turning the package over, we get a look at the back insert which has a few words from OCZ.

If you need technical support, it says you can visit their website for contact information. Could be a problem if your PC is completely out of commission and you can't even get into any operation system!

Opening the blister package allows you to easily remove the DIMMS from their secured location. Our kit shines in the light and the big fat Z really stands out.

If we take a closer look at an individual stick, we can see the honeycomb design of the heatspreader. The individual memory modules are visible behind the honeycomb mesh.

A closer look at the label and we see what the default timing is rated at 3-4-3-8. Given that this is a 2GB kit and it is already at CAS3, I do not expect to be breaking any overclocking records with it.

A unique feature about the XTC headspreaders are their lack of any clips holding them down. This will really make my life easier later on in the review.

The clipless design allows for better convection from the top of the kit as well as the sides.

One thing I noticed about the XTC heatspreader is that it is actually two separate parts. The honeycomb mesh is laid across the entire face of the DIMM while the gold Z cover is purely for aesthetics.

Same idea but at a different angle:

As I mentioned earlier, I had absolutely no problems taking the heat spreader off of these DIMMs. The bonding between the IC's and the honeycomb grill is not your typical tacky thermal tape, but instead OCZ uses a translucent material. It's hard to say what the thermal properties of this new tape are at this point in time.

The only problem with this tape is that it easily tears and wraps over itself. I
strongly advise
that you do not remove the heatspreaders from your DIMMs.

The heart and sole of this kit is based off a few bits of silicon with Samsung's name etched in. The ICs are from Samsung's UCCC family.

The part number is Samsung K4H510838C-UCCC and dated 540. Using Google, I am quickly redirected to Samsung's IC page where I see these are rated for 200MHz operation at 3-3-3 (CL-tRCD-tRP).

These ICs are resting on BrainPower's 6 layer PCB – B6U808. BrainPower long been the number one pick for PCB boards among enthusiast memory manufacturers. It's not unexpected to find them here.

Before we get any further into our review, it's time we take a detailed look at the specifications.

Page 3 : Specifications

The following information has been taken directly off of OCZ's webpage. The advertised specifications:

Here are a few words OCZ would like to share with you:

One thing for certain is that the low voltage requirements will allow you to use this kit with any motherboard; enthusiast or generic. Granted that it has loose timings like most 2GB kits out there, we probably won't see a very significant change in frequency overclocking. However, there is only one way to confirm that report, and that is to install the kit and get overclocking!

Page 4 : Installation and Overclocking

Installing a memory kit is incredible easy, and it's that reason alone why OCZ doesn't include any manual or guide. All you need to do is pull the memory clips back, remove your old sticks and slide in the new ones. They only go in one way, so if you're having to apply a lot of force you may want to double check that you don't have the DIMM turned around.

With my Albatron K8SLI, the dual channel slots are located side by side; the worst case scenario in terms of memory cooling. However, since the slots are very close to the CPU socket, peripheral cooling will help keep the XTC kit cool.

The heatspreaders
do not
add any height to the overall profile, so this means you will not have any vertical clearance issues with heatsinks.

Before I begin any memory review, I like to subject the modules to some burning in before I get into any serious use. Armed with my Venice 3000+ that is capable of going over 300 MHz, I let MemTest 3.46 run for 24 hours with the memory clocked at 225MHz and the timings set to 3-4-3-8 1T. After the 24 hours were up I ran a blend of memory and CPU stress testing.

Overclocking this kit was not very much fun. I first tried to find the lowest timing for 200MHz operation, that ended up being 2.5-3-3-7. From there I worked my way up until the kit was no longer stable. I constantly adjusted the voltage and timings, but the best I could squeeze out of the kit was 260 MHz with 3-4-3-8 timings at 2.8V. Even at 3.0V I could not get MemTest to run a complete eight hours without producing errors. I was able to go as high as 265 MHz with errors and even this stage was stable under Windows with Prime running for another eight hours and the benchmarks completing without any problems. Since 265 MHz was
not
stable under MemTest I did not include it in the benchmarks.

Here are the memory settings I used during the benchmarks:

On to the benchmarks!

Page 5 : Benchmarks

We'll kick this section off with my system specifications:

The suite of software used includes Sisoft Sandra 2005 SR3 Memory Benchmark, Everest 2.73 Memory Benchmark and SuperPi 1.4 Mod 1M and 32M calculations. To test the overall system performance I will be using FutureMark's PCMark 2004 and 2005 as well as FutureMark's 3DMark 2001SE and 3DMark 2005. In the wonderful world of games I will use Benchemall to execute Half-Life 2, Doom III and Battlefield II at 1024*768. Each application was executed three times and the average value was used in the graphs.

As a reminder, here are the frequencies tested:

The very last thing I will look at is the thermal performance of the XTC memory modules. Without further ado, let's begin!

Sisoft Sandra 2005 SR3 – Memory Benchmarks

Everest – Memory

Everest – Latency

Super Pi – 1M

Super Pi – 32M

FutureMark PCMark

FutureMark 3DMark

As we can see, as the frequency increases we get a better overall performance. I was hoping to be able to get below the 30 minute mark for the 32M Pi calculation, but instead we got very close. Through PCMark we see a fairly large gain from the overclock. Further, the general performance of the PC seemed far smoother than when I stuck with a basic 1GB kit.

Gaming Performance – 1024*768

The performance numbers continue to increase as we move into the gaming benchmarks. While I don't have any formal comparisons with my 1GB kits, the results are very impressive. We see a 20FPS gain on HL2 over what I'm use to seeing with my system and also similar results with BattleField2!

It's particularly difficult to determine how well the XTC heatspreaders perform unless I had two of the exact same kits sporting the new and old heatspreaders. As much as I wish I could say that I do, I don't. Instead, all I can do is run these memory modules at 3.0V and using the thermal probe on the SilverStone case get a temperature reading at different spots. As I mentioned before, I stuck the probe on the side closest to the CPU cooler (left), in between the two memory modules (middle) and then as far from the CPU cooler as possible (right).

I also did the exact same thing with my old OCZ 2*512MB PC4800 Platinum Elite Edition memory modules that use Samsung TCCD memory. Both kits were running at 260 MHz with 3-4-3-8 1T timings at 3.0V. Here are the results:

In all honesty, the value of these numbers may be questionable, but we do see a small temperature drop when using the XTC kit, but particularly where the two faces are side by side and there is
no
airflow.

Page 6 : Conclusion

While the focus of this review is clearly on the XTC heatspreaders, one cannot ignore the fact that the XTC heatspreaders were used on the Gold GX lineup. The combination performs very well as the temperatures of the DIMMs are very low and you'll be happy to know the low voltage requirement makes this kit useable on most any motherboard.

With the Gold Series, most of us know that it was not aimed towards the overclocking crowd, and even more so since this is a 2GB kit. The extra 4% I was able to squeeze out of the kit is not a terrible accomplishment, but overclockers should seriously consider the OCZ PC4000 2GB EB Platinum Ed. instead if they want to push for those higher frequencies.

The price difference between the 2GB PC4000 Gold and the 2GB PC4000 Gold XTC is less than twenty dollars, and to some this may be twenty dollars they'd rather spend somewhere else. For others though, it is an investment that ensures your memory stays cool and remains on the cutting edge of heatspreader technology. I for one think it is an excellent idea and I hope OCZ carries it through with the Platinum family; better cooling on the PC4800's could never be a bad idea!

Advantages

Beautiful heatspreaders
Low voltage requirement
Performance boost with 2GB kit

Disadvantages

4% overclock achieved

Overclockers Online would like to thank OCZ for making this review possible.

Don't forget to cast your ballot in our latest memory poll!