OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 / ATI Certified DDR2-800 review

Test

In order to compare the performance of these memory modules with ones we tested earlier, we tested them in the same way as we did in Hardware.Info Magazine #3/2006. We determined the maximum clock speed for three oft-used timings: 5-5-5-15, 4-4-4-12 and 3-3-3-9. We did this in two systems: an Intel Pentium XE 965 combined with an ASUS P5WD2-E motherboard with an Intel 975X chipset, and an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 combined with an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard with nVidia nForce 590 SLI chipset.

To begin with the Platinum Rev. 2 modules: at the loose 5-5-5-15 timings we managed to clock the modules to 928 MHz in the Intel system and to no less than 1114 MHz in the AMD system. The voltage required for this feat lies in both cases around 2.25 Volts. With 4-4-4-12 timings the modules reach 928 MHz in the Intel system and AMD's performance is a tad higher at 948 MHz. OCZ sels the modules as DDR2-800 with 4-4-4-15, so there is just enough leeway at these standard timings. Running at tight 3-3-3-9 timings seems to be severely testing the modules: in the Intel system they reach 736 MHz, with AMD hardware 712 MHz. Thus it is sadly impossible to run at DDR2-800 with these fast timings.

The performance of the ATI-certified modules lie very close to that of the Platinum Rev. 2 modules in all tests, only affirming our suspicions that that we are dealing with the same modules. Both the 5-5-5-15 and 4-4-4-12 timings keep the modules at 940 MHz in the Intel system, which is slightly higher than the Rev. 2 sticks. At 3-3-3-9 timings we reach 928 MHz on the Intel system, a fraction lower than the other modules. On the AMD system these modules similarly improve in performance: a maximum of 1010 MHz at 5-5-5-15, 944 MHz at 4-4-4-12 and 750 MHz at 3-3-3-9. Seeing as these modules are "certified by ATI" we also did a second run of tests on a motherboard with ATI Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset, but we did not seen any large differences with the other AMD board.