Performance Comparisons

Performance of the OCZ EL PC4000 VX Gold was compared to all of the memory recently tested on the AMD Athlon 64 platform. While we did not test on an Intel platform, the performance results can also be generally compared to previous benchmark results on the Intel 875 memory test bed. More results are available in recent DDR memory reviews at:

Corsair 4400C25: Taking Samsung TCCD to New Heights
PQI & G. Skill: New Choices in 2-2-2 Memory
Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules
OCZ 3700 Gold Rev. 3: DDR500 Value for Athlon 64 & Intel 478
Geil PC3200 Ultra X: High Speed & Record Bandwidth
= F-A-S-T= DDR Memory: 2-2-2 Roars on the Scene
Buffalo FireStix: Red Hot Name for a New High-End Memory
New DDR Highs: Shikatronics, OCZ, and the Fastest Memory Yet
The Return of 2-2-2: Corsair 3200XL & Samsung PC4000
OCZ 3700EB: Making Hay with Athlon 64
OCZ 3500EB: The Importance of Balanced Memory Timings
Mushkin PC3200 2-2-2 Special: Last of a Legend
PMI DDR533: A New Name in High-Performance Memory
Samsung PC3700: DDR466 Memory for the Masses
Kingmax Hardcore Memory: Tiny BGA Reaches For Top Speed
New Memory Highs: Corsair and OCZ Introduce DDR550
OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 2: The Universal Soldier
OCZ 4200EL: Tops in Memory Performance
Mushkin PC4000 High Performance: DDR500 PLUS
Corsair TwinX1024-4000 PRO: Improving DDR500 Performance
Mushkin & Adata: 2 for the Fast-Timings Lane
Searching for the Memory Holy Grail – Part 2

AMD Memory Performance Comparisons

OCZ EL PC4000 VX Gold was compared to other memory included in recent Athlon 64 Memory Reviews. This included all tested memory since the launch of the A64 memory test bed in Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules . Memory performance was compared at 200x12 (2.4Ghz, DDR400), 218x11 (2.4Ghz, DDR438), 240x10 (2.4Ghz, DDR480), 267x9 (2.4Ghz, DDR533), the Highest Memory Speed that could be reached, and the Highest Memory Performance Settings that we could reach. With a constant CPU speed, memory comparisons (except for top-speed and performance) show the true impact of faster speed and slower memory timings on memory performance.

Test Results: OCZ EL PC4000 VX Gold DDR400/2.4GHz Performance
Comments Locked

67 Comments

View All Comments

  • ozzimark - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    oh wait, i forgot this is also on a different motherboard.. are the nf4 pci-e boards really that much faster?
  • Wesley Fink - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    #12 - The memory ran quite cool at 3.0V, and was even cool to about 3.2V. Above that, however, it started to get quite warm and I did mount a fan over the dimms at speeds above DDR500 to get higher stable overclocks. The VX ran fine at higher speeds, stable and no crashes, but the extra cooling gave a few FSB more in overclocking.

    #13 - The Value Ram roundup is in the works and will hopefully publish next week while I am out of the US.
  • ozzimark - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    umm, i have a problem with the video card benchmarks..

    go back to the 61.77 drivers you used for the rest of the benchmarks, vx at 2-3-2 shouldn't be that much faster than other ram at 2-2-2 at the same mhz.
  • Wesley Fink - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    #10 - I don't know how the wording got turned around, but the sentence has been corrected. It now reads:

    "As we raise the memory speed from 200 to 267 (DDR400 to DDR533), keeping the CPU speed constant, memory Read increases over 25% while memory Write over the same range shows just a 14% increase. That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory Read will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory Write dependent."

  • eetnoyer - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    Nice review, and great memory. But for those of us who aren't willing to piss away that much money for memory, are you still planning on the value memory round-up that was promised last summer?
  • elrolio - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    my question is:

    how were the temps runnin that stuff at 3.6v? was it super hot? were case temps drastically higher? did you need active fan cooling over the ram? open test bed? was it all good in the hood?

    thanks, just wondering...
  • AnnihilatorX - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    This ram rocks solid oO

    255 USD according to haelduksf
    That's a bargain.

    Again I am not in US and sometimes I just get depressed when I cannot find a single computer equipment as cheap as US in UK and HK.
  • slashbinslashbash - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    Typo on Page 4 (last sentence):

    "That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory write will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory write dependent."

    Should be

    "That means that while all operations benefit from memory speed increases, operations more dependent on memory write will benefit much more from memory speed boosts than those that are memory read dependent."

    I'm just wondering, though..... can there possibly be a (real-life, practical) application that writes to memory more than it reads from memory? I mean, what's the point of writing to memory, if the stored values are never accessed? Seems like a pretty inefficient program to me :)

    Good article, I agree this is one of the few non-boring RAM reviews I've ever seen :)
  • Tiamat - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    Wow, the huge performance delta is incredible! Just WOW
  • Quiksel - Friday, March 4, 2005 - link

    normally, I hate reading memory reviews. Looking at the charts, I don't ever get excited about advances in the stuff, simply because you never see all that much of an improvement on the current king of performance.

    However, I must admit I was enjoying the article much more than I have ever have before. I guess when you see 10's of fps better, and there is such a marked improvement in performance over the competition, you can't help but want some of that action. ;)

    now, if we can just see that kind of performance for the sub-$100 market ;)

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now