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OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 XTC Platinum 2GB


Date
: 03/28/06 – 03:47:29 AM

Author
:

Category
: Memory

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
OCZ Technology

Price:
$272.44USD (NewEgg)

It has been a while since I got my hands on a 2GB kit of memory so when I was offered the new OCZ Platinum XTC dual channel kit I didn't hesitate in saying yes. The technical support offered by OCZ is second to none and their lifetime warranty with the incredible support behind them makes OCZ one of the best in the performance memory market. OCZ is also an industry front runner and are usually at the forefront to introduce new memory packages with ICs that no one else does. A true industry leader in every sense of the word.

If you caught our earlier news report then you will know that the ICs on this set of memory are Micron 5B F-die. Now I have to admit that OCZ certainly was not the first company to introduce these ICs in 2GB packages, but they definitely are one of the first in getting them to retail outlets as they started popping up a couple weeks ago from the time of releasing this review.

The much talked about Micron ICs, mated to a BrainPower PCB should lead to quite the lethal combination. Include the XTC heatspreaders and what we have is a highly anticipated package that not only performs extremely well at the stock rated speeds of DDR500 3-3-3-8 but also should provide some headroom for overclocking by staying nice and cool.

Page 2 : Package & Contents

Ahhh the blister pack. What would memory manufacturers do without this little invention. Simple, elegant, efficient and darn near perfect in every way. Heck, it even lets us see the memory inside without opening it.

Like all OCZ performance memory, the 2GB Platinum XTC modules come secured individually in a clear blister pack with a cardboard insert providing the backdrop.

The cardboard insert hasn't changed for quite a while so we all know what is on it. The important high-lights include the lifetime warranty printed here on the front. OCZ stands behind its products and provides a great warranty experience by making it as easy on its customers as it can. Forums all over the internet are flooded with threads about how great the OCZ warranty service is.

Not only is the warranty good but the service before any warranty is also top notch. They have a 1-800 technical support number which can be found here on the rear of the package as well as an active section of the www.bleedinedge.com forums dedicated to technical support of OCZ products. On top of that there is a number of OCZ staff floating around various other forums that are always ready to help.

Like all other OCZ modules, the XTC Platinum comes with an identification sticker that provides the model number, speed, and timings of the modules. These are great for identifying memory but as Simon touched on in his last [url/index.php?page=articles&num=355]XTC review[/url], this sticker defeats the entire purpose of the XTC heatspreaders on 1/4 of the module. I would like to see OCZ come up with an innovative solution to this issue.

Here they are! This is our third pair of OCZ memory with the TXC heatspreaders so there is nothing really new to see here except for the platinum finish as opposed to the gold. The only problem is that in every photo the sticks look gold and not platinum. No matter what I did, I couldn't get a good shot of the color of this memory. You will have to trust me when I say the platinum finish is dead sexy and will look great in anyones case.

I don't want to sound like I am harping on OCZ here but…well…I am. The whole point of the XTC heatspreaders is to provide direct access for fresh air to get to the ICs and allow heat to escape. As we can see here, the stickers cover almost the entire side of one half. It will always be debatable as to whether or not the heatspreaders are doing as much as claimed but the stickers certainly are not helping.

Where I think these heatspreaders really shine is by not having the tops closed therefore allowing heat to naturally rise and dissipate into the case not staying huddled around the memory. It appears that OCZ has not made any changes to the XTC heat spreader or the application using the same translucent thermal tape as the original pair of XTC modules that I reviewed a few months ago.

As-per-usual, OCZ uses the best in the business as the backbone of this memory kit using Brain Power 808 multi layered PCB. This PCB has been the staple of many great OCZ modules and it doesn't appear to be going anywhere which is nothing but good news in our eyes here at Overclockers Online.

The moment you were all waiting for, well at least I was. What is underneath these beautiful heatspreaders? Normally I reserve this photo until after testing for fear of damaging the modules but there was nothing going to stop me from getting at the ICs within minutes of receiving the FedEx package. This photo was first posted a couple of weeks ago when I received the memory so most of you already know what is powering these sticks. You can find a little more specific information about the Micron 5B-F ICs in the next section that is dedicated to specifications.

Page 3 : Specifications

I will start off this section with the specifications found at the OCZ web site.

These DDR500 modules are rated to run that speed at 3-3-3-8 timings with 2.8v. 2.8v seems to be a little bit high for only DDR500 with the Micron ICs based on other manufacturers Micron modules. This may indicate that more voltage will be necessary to get higher clocks than the others or that there isn't a lot of headroom with these modules. Past experience with Micron ICs is that they are very heat affected so voltage generally isn't a good thing for them. We will have to see in the overclocking section. Notice that OCZ provides their
OVP
with these sticks like all other performance memory and this will give me some room to try and really push these sticks with some active cooling. Here is what OCZ explains their OVP:

It looks like 3.15v will be the max I can "legally" go with these sticks. Hopefully voltage won't be necessary but if it is I will have no problem turning it up. Now, the mandatory snippet from the OCZ web site:

As for the actual ICs being used on these modules, the Micron 5B F, I failed as a journalist and couldn't find precise information from Microns web site. The part number
46V64M8 -5B F
matched up to a number of different ICs but none that clearly were these ones seen here so I have decided to omit any specific information. I can say it does appear that they should be able to operate at temperatures from 0C ~ 70C. Let's hope they never actually get that hot.

Page 4 : Installation & Overclocking

The hardware used to put this memory through the tough testing, overclocking, and benchmarking is listed below:

Installation is not that difficult and doesn't need to be explained. The standard heatspreaders lead to a routine installation of the 4000ELPEGXT kit. I will mention that everything about this memory tells me that the orange slots are going to provide the best results so I will be starting there.

I mentioned in the list of hardware, I will be actively cooling these modules. Really, when pushing any set of performance memory, active cooling should be used but especially in this case where the earlier revision of these Micron ICs had a short life span on other manufacturer's DIMMs partially due to heat, or so was the speculation.

The active cooling should really help the XTC heatspreaders do their job and keep these sticks cool so I can push them to achieve their full potential. Nothing fancy, no bracket, no mounting mechanism, just good old fashioned common sense has my little fan setup ready to go.

Like all memory kits I receive for review, I start off with a heavy dose of Memtest86 at stock frequencies, timings, and voltage. This is partially for burn-in but more importantly to make sure the kit is stable at the advertised speeds as well to make sure that should the memory die, it was my fault and not because they were dead to begin with. You might also notice that the Chipset used for burning in was the ATI RS482. I had to utilize the services of the ECS KA1-MVP as my Ultra-D was "busy" (drying off). No problems here so it is time to get to work. I will start with finding the lowest possible voltage that I can get the Premier XTC 2GB kit from OCZ to run, at the stock frequency and timings of 250 / 3-3-3-8 / 1T.

As the screenshot above demonstrates, I will be testing stability with StressPrime04, 32M Super Pi and some sort of 3D benchmark to make sure each stage of the overclock will be stable in windows no matter what we are doing. Shaving a full .2v off of the stock rated voltage of 2.8v is a promising sign of things to come. This gives us plenty of voltage to add to this kit before we even get to the recommended voltage. Notice the secondary timings are quite loose but I was shooting for stability at low voltage and not performance.

Next up on the docket was to see how high of a frequency I could get the kit to run with the stock 3-3-3-8 timings at a command rate of 1T. The weird thing about this is that the memory only seemed to respond to voltage. I played with secondary timings, drive strength, and data drive strength until I was blue in the face and no matter what I did, the memory just wanted more voltage in order to run any faster. I was not really comfortable with running the memory at this high of a voltage so I stopped here as this is where the OCZ warranty would end. Here is a chart of how the memory scaled:

It was weird. Loosening the timings to 3-4-4-8 or the secondary timings would not increase the frequency that this memory was Prime stable or 32M stable at. It seemed to hit a wall at 271 and hit it hard. I could get 272 Prime stable for 2 hours but that is it. Even going to a 2T command rate netted nothing as far as frequency was concerned. I thought it may have been the memory controller on the Opteron 146 I was using so I tried two others with identical results. I also tried another BIOS and again, netted no benefits. At this point it was time to accept the highest prime stable speeds and move on. Here is a teaser of what this memory was capable of running on a 9/10 divider with the CPU at 3GHz. So close to breaking 24 minutes, yet so far away.

Page 5 : Performance

I used the standard swarm of memory bandwidth tests on this kit that I use on all memory kits that come through. We will start with a look at how SiSoft Sandra Pro 2005 SR3 and Lavalys' Everest Ultimate 06 gauge the bandwidth both reading and writing as well as the latency. After that, Futuremark programs will be run utilizing the memory benchmark suites of PCMark 04 and 05 as well as 3DMark 01se which is a good full system test. SuperPi Mod 1.4 runs of 1M and 32M digits are also included with a few gaming benchmarks to wrap up the results.

In all the bandwidth tests the memory scales evenly as the frequency of the CPU and RAM is increased showing no real difference between CAS 2.5 and CAS 3. Only in the Everest latency test does the lower CAS show a slight advantage of timings over frequency. Of course, this is only true up to a certain degree with frequency ultimately ending up king in the end.

The results from the application testing show the same scaling as the frequency is increased. My memory results are always a little bit skewed because of the fact that the CPU speed is also increased along with the memory frequency but if there was an issue with the performance of the RAM at any given speed it should show up as an odd scale on the charts. Notice the SuperPi 32M digit calculation. I fought with this set of memory to get it under 27 minutes at a CPU speed of 2710MHz running 1:1 with the memory but could not make it happen with any combination of secondary timings. Maybe in a few more weeks the memory will loosen up enough from constant use to make that happen but it definitely isn't going to happen right now.

Page 6 : Conclusion

I think OCZ has proved its worth once again with another fine kit of memory that should fit the landscape of the 2GB market just fine. This market has become a confusing battleground over the last few months with many different types of modules out there including Samsung UCCC, Infineon CE-5/6, and now Micron 5B-F based sticks. Each IC comes with its own advantages and disadvantages with the Micron 5B-F proving its worth on these Platinum XTC modules seeming to run flawlessly at higher voltages thanks, no doubt, to the XTC heatspreaders.

Gone are the days of ridiculous overclocks we saw with 512MB and 1GB memory kits in the past. 2GB memory kits just don't run as fast with very few sets getting over 280MHz these days. These Micron 5B-F based modules faired very well stretching their usability up to 270MHz+ at the tight timings of 3-3-3-8. There is certainly no disparity between stable windows frequencies and stable gaming frequencies with these modules gaming just fine at the top speeds without so much as a hiccup.

The performance of the OCZ EL Platinum XTC modules is very good for the frequencies that it was able to run at. Not only are the primary timings of 3-3-3-8 very impressive at these speeds but the secondary timings were quite tight providing some very exciting SuperPi times and synthetic bandwidth numbers. Benchmarkers and gamers alike will definitely want to check these modules out when shopping for high performance 2GB memory kits.

Advantages

• Stock speeds at very low voltage
• Plenty of extra performance available for those that like to tweak
• XTC heatspreaders again prove their worth
• Solid overclocking headroom

  Disadvantages

• Plenty of voltage needed to maximize the memories potential

  Overclockers Online would like to thank OCZ for supplying the sample for this review.