|
Overclocking
Before I jump into overclocking and performance, let's take a look at the
test system specs...
|
Test System
Specifications |
| CPU:
|
AMD Athlon 64
3700+ (San Diego) |
| Motherboard: |
DFI Lanparty UT
NF4 Ultra-D |
| Hard Drive: |
WD SE16 SATA II
16MB Cache |
| Optical Drives: |
BenQ DW1640 &
Yamaha CRW-F1 |
| Video Card: |
Asus EAX1600XT
Silent PCI-E |
| Power Supply: |
Ultra X2-Connect
520W PSU |
| Case: |
MGE Titanium |
| Cooling: |
CoolIT Freezone |
Overclocking consisted of the best stable overclock running at
maximum O/C. Also note that in order to achieve these results, I ran
the system using the excellent CoolIT Freezone
I reviewed just recently.
When running them at their rated timings,
overclocking was very impressive. I was able to take to take the
system all the way up to 268 maintaining a multiplier of 11.0. This
means the 2.2GHz San Diego was running just under 3GHz. However, in
order to maintain 100% stability, I had to increase the memory voltage from
2.8 to 2.9 when running at max O/C. According to their features, this
will not void your warranty and you should feel comfortable running them
this way.
Performance
The
OCZ XTC PC-4000 modules seriously impressed in all the bench tests. In
fact,
I was able to achieve much higher numbers in the bench tests than a majority
of the others who have had the pleasure of reviewing these modules.
They are truly impressive numbers!
Measuring performance consisted of three tools I find to be the best suited
for this kind of product evaluation. They are: Sisoftware's
SANDRA 2005, PCMark 2004 and Everest Ultimate Edition. I like to use
SANDRA because they do have a free version that anyone can download and do
their own comparisons. The other two are not free, but they offer some
excellent memory benchmarks. Results were given both at stock speed
and maximum O/C. At stock speed, the modules were running at lower
2.5-3-3-7 timings.
1. Sisoftware SANDRA 2005 SR2
SANDRA results were very impressive, easily
passing the 7K mark when running at maximum O/C. This is really
what these excellent sticks are capable of. I say this because I've
read some reviews, some of which were running the same hardware and the highest
numbers were in the low 6K.
2. PCMark 2004 Pro
Results with PCMark were just as impressive
and showed a significant boost when running at max O/C. I was able to
take these to the 7K mark, but they were just not stable enough at this
point. However, these numbers are indeed excellent.
3. Everest Ultimate Edition 2006
Everest is an excellent bench suite that
offers three different memory benchmarks: Memory Read, Memory Write
and Latency. The results were again quite remarkable but note the
difference in the latency scores. This was a result of running the
sticks at lower latencies when not overclocking.
Overall, the XTC PC-4000 modules seriously
impressed, both in performance and overclocking potential.
|
