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Introduction
The memory market right now is at an all time high in competition. Undoubtedly
there's questions in the consumer's mind about which company offers the
best quality of product, as well as who is reliable for future sales,
and who isn't. Many people out there are also fed up with the old stand-by
mainstays who have been in the memory market for so long, but have been
giving the customer a bad deal because of monopolistic conditions.
Fortunately, companies like OCZ Technology came around and
made upgrading your computer fun again. Good products at a competitive
price is their motto - which is extremely admirable, but is it true? We'll
find out.
dual channel ddr pc3200
Dual Channel DDR RAM offers a bit more than your standard
DDR RAM, because more and more motherboards are beginning to use Dual
Channel DDR Technology. PC3200 RAM screams along at a fast pace 400MHz,
which is utilized just fine by the latest motherboards. Dual Channel DDR
technology requires that memory be added in identical pairs - the reason
that OCZ has included 2 256MB sticks with this package. The payoff is
that you get the advantage of dual bandwidth, so you can take full advantage
of your systems power. OCZ Technology has quite the quality assurance
program, as each module is hand tested and matched across a variety of
motherboards to insure flawless performance on any motherboard. Add in
the copper heat spreader to maximize cooling, which extends your RAM's
life while increasing performance.
The Installation
There is nothing tricky about RAM installation. Just pop
it into the appropriate slots into your motherboard (consult your particular
motherboard's manual for correct DIMM placements) and turn on the system.
A BIOS change might be required, but it is unlikely.
Performance Testing
We used two programs to test performance with RAM - AIDA
32 and SiSoft Sandra. We used three different types of RAM for the testing:
(1) OCZ 512MB Dual Channel PC3200 DDR RAM. Consists of two
256MB sticks.
(2) PC2700 DDR RAM, 1 512MB stick.
(3) 1 GB of Dual Channel DDR PC2700 RAM, 2 512MB sticks.
The first test below, AIDA 32 Read & Write
Benchmarking (numbers represent MB/s, higher is better) illustrates
the RAM at the normal Clock 2 (CL2) setting . As you can see it performed
very well. This graph seems to show the importance of more RAM per DIMM
slot, but if you rank this RAM against the one stick of 512MB, the read
test was far and away better with OCZ's solution.
The next test, using SiSoft Sandra showed
some more interesting results. The OCZ 512MB PC3200 Dual Channel DDR RAM
greatly outperformed the 512MB of PC2700 memory, and was very close in
performance (within 3% actually) of the 1GB of Dual Channel DDR RAM. Number
values are MB/s (higher is better).
Value
In all honesty I was pretty surprised how the RAM held up
against the competition and the numbers above show that for a 512MB solution,
this is a very good way to go. The price point is good, and considering
that OCZ places itself as a "high quality" product and no just
a generic provider, the money you spend here is probably the smart buy.
Why save yourself some pennies when you can invest in some RAM that's
been hand tested for quality? It makes economic sense.
Longevity
Obviously with RAM going up and up in performance as far
as what is available now, the longevity of the RAM isn't quite what it
used to be. Already, the PC3200 RAM is considered a bit "slow"
by power-user standards. 400MHz however will do you just fine if you are
running a Pentium 4 system with no HyperThreading technology, or an older
AMD XP system. If you really want the best performance, PC3200 isn't really
the way to go, but if you wanted something decent, then this is a great
way to go.
Overall Impressions
We really took our time with this RAM because we wanted to do something
with it that you can't measure with some fancy benchmarking utility -
stability and long term performance. We put these sticks of RAM through
hell and back, on at least 7 different systems running a wide variety
of motherboard chipsets. This set of RAM really held up well, never gave
us any problems and really felt like they were manufactured well.
The RAM's performance was very impressive, especially considering
it was pitted against 1GB of RAM ... double the amount with similar statistics
in SiSoft Sandra.
The company itself seems very solid. This was our first
experience with OCZ Technology and their staff seems to live up to the
words on their "About Us" page that tells a tale of a company
that really gives a damn about their customers. The fact that this is
*hand tested* is pretty impressive to us, and the fact they it is a well
manufactured set of RAM that is perfect for those of you looking for a
nice performing RAM that won't break your break account.
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10 / 10 |
OVERALL SCORE
94%
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10 / 10 |
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9 / 10 |
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10 / 10 |
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8 / 10 |
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9.4 / 10 |
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