OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 1GB Gold GX XTC

Performance:

As with many of our past DDR2 reviews, we turned to one of our reliable Abit AW8 series motherboards for testing that is based upon Intel's 955X Chipset. Although the i955X is about to be replaced by the i975X, its performance is phenomenal and offers terrific DDR2 options including DDR2-800 support. In addition to the Abit AW8, we used a Pentium 4 530 (3.00GHz) rather than the usual Pentium D 820 suspect to offer greater overclocking options. Cooling the CPU was the Swiftech H20-220 APEX Ultra. Below is the complete rundown of system components and major Linux software versions.

For benchmarking the modules, we used our same set of Linux DDR/DDR2 memory benchmarks. Our current arsenal consists of Enemy Territory, Doom 3, Quake 4, LAME Compilation, LAME Encoding, FreeBench, and RAMspeed. As always, our standard benchmarking methods applied and on the following pages are all of our results with the settings at which the specific benchmark executed. In addition, memory stability and diagnostics was determined via memtest86+ v1.65. Throughout all of the testing for this article Abit's official AW8 BIOS v15 was used, which appended specific improvements to CPU and memory support. After all of the benchmarks were run at stock speeds of DDR2-533 @ 4-4-4-12, we proceeded to tighten the timings until the system became unstable in our array of tests. With OCZ's Gold GX XTC at DDR2-533, we managed to run the 2 x 512MB memory modules at 3-3-3-8 without any memory errors. As for maximizing the DDR2 frequency, we were able to push the OCZ system memory up to a whopping 736MHz before beginning to fall prey to memory errors and other conflicts. We were able to exceed DDR2-740MHz but were greeted by countless memory errors. The timings were kept at 5-5-5-15 while the DDR2 memory voltage was maintained at 2.30V. Overall, we were quite satisfied in its overclocking abilities with the CPU being water-cooled and using the i955X Chipset. For comparison purposes, we also ran Corsair's XMS2-5400UL 2 x 512MB at DDR2-533 @ 4-4-4-12. The XMS2-5400UL employs Micron "Fatbody" D9 ICs that were speed sorted for optimal performance. Below is the complete rundown of memory specifications in which we executed our set of memory benchmarks.

3000MHz (200MHz x 15) - DDR2-533MHz @ 4-4-4-12 - 1.80V
3000MHz (200MHz x 15) - DDR2-533MHz @ 3-3-3-8 - 1.90V
3750MHz (250MHz x 15) - DDR2-667MHz @ 4-4-4-12 - 1.95V
4140MHz (276MHz x 15) - DDR2-736MHz @ 5-5-5-15 - 2.30V
Corsair XMS2-5400UL: 3000MHz (200MHz x 15) - DDR2-533MHz @ 4-4-4-12 - 1.80V