DDR2 Roundup: Reaching for 667 and Beyond

OCZ Premier PC2 4300

OCZ is a well-known supplier of Enthusiast DDR memory. However, OCZ is still working on their performance versions of DDR2. We expect to receive a DDR2 667 version in the next couple of days that is presumably based on the same high-performing Micron chips that topped these performance tests.

For this roundup, OCZ supplied their Premier PC2-4300. The Premier line is OCZ's budget memory, comparable to value lines from other manufacturers.

Test DIMMs were a matched pair of single-sided 512MB DDR2 DIMMs with copper-colored heatspreaders.

The memory chips are Samsung high-density, and OCZ also provided a pair of 1GB DIMMs for testing. We did not include the 1GB OCZ PC2 4300 DIMMs in this review because we were told recently that the production version of the 1GB DIMM would use different memory chips. We saw no point in including DIMMs that would not be representative of the retail OCZ product.

Test Results: OCZ Premier PC2 4300

The full suite of benchmark tests were run at all memory speeds. This includes Quake3, Super PI, Sandra 2004 SP2 Memory Tests, Aida 32 Memory Tests, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory. We also ran UT2003, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 at every memory speed to verify stability of the reported memory timings. All benchmarks and additional tests had to complete without incident for the memory settings to be considered stable.

OCZ Premier PC2 4300 (DDR2 533) - 2 x 512Mb Single-Bank
Speed	Memory Timings & Voltage	Quake3 fps	Sandra UNBuffered	Sandra Standard Buffered	Super PI 2M places (time in sec)
533DDR 800FSB	3-3-3-10 1.85V	370.5	INT 3001 FLT 3030	INT 4897 FLT 4897	107
667DDR 1000FSB	4-4-4-10 1.9V	454.1	INT 3457 FLT 3546	INT 6089 FLT 6084	86
686DDR 258FSB	4-4-4-10 1.9V	468.0	INT 3593 FLT 3655	INT 6266 FLT 6274	84

OCZ Premier PC2 4300 (DDR2 533)
Speed	RCW-ET Radar	Aida 32 Read	Aida 32 Write	Aida 32 Total
533DDR 800FSB	78.4	5409	2081	7490
667DDR 1000FSB	96.9	6572	2575	9147
686DDR 258FSB	99.8	6743	2664	9407

Since the Samsung chips were some of the first working DDR2 produced by the memory manufacturers, we are not surprised to find average performance in the OCZ PC2 4300 results. Having said that, it is important to note that even the older Samsung chips manage DDR2 533 performance at 3-3-3 timings and at 1.85V, and DDR2 667 and 686 at 4-4-4 and a modest 1.9V.