Value RAM Roundup: Computing On a Budget

OCZ PC3200 Premier

In the past two years, OCZ has moved from relative obscurity to becoming one of the most widely recognized names in enthusiast products. Today, OCZ markets power supplies, heat sinks, memory voltage boosters, and thermal compounds, but OCZ is still best known for their enthusiast memory. Recently, OCZ has also been quite innovative in new product introductions, including products like our current RAM Speed champ, OCZ VX, which requires a very non-standard 3.5 to 3.6V to really shine.

What many forget is that like Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, and other full-line memory companies, OCZ has a very large line of value products. The Premier Series is a Value line, and the PC3200 Premier is a typical Value product, with a web selling price as low as $121 at mWave.

OCZ uses cheaper packaging for their Premier line than their high-end products, but that fits the target, which is low cost. Like Mushkin, OCZ chose to include heatspreaders on their Value product; in this case, copper-colored heatspreaders. The Premier test DIMMs came as a matched pair of 512MB DIMMs in a 1GB kit.

PC3200 Premier is built with PSC memory chips, a Taiwan company that provides chips for value products from several memory manufacturers.

Specifications

OCZ rates their PC3200 Premier at the more aggressive CAS 2.5 timings at DDR400 and stock voltage.

OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) Memory Specifications
Number of DIMMs & Banks	2 DS
DIMM Size Total Memory	512 MB 1GB
Rated Timings	2.5-3-3-7 at DDR400
SPD (Auto) Timings	2.5-3-3-7
Rated Voltage	2.6V

Test Results

The OCZ PC3200 Premier is the first Value RAM we have tested that reaches DDR480, our next test point on the 2.4GHz ratios. Our samples actually booted as high as DDR500, but memtest86, Super Pi and games were not stable beyond DDR480, regardless of voltage.

OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) - 2 x 512Mb Double-Bank
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz	Memory Speed	Memory Timings & Voltage	Quake3 fps	Sandra UNBuffered	Sandra Standard Buffered	Super PI 2M places (time in sec)	Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps
12x200	400 DDR	2.5-3-2-6 2.6V 1T	535.0	INT 2637 FLT 2826	INT 6072 FLT 6025	83	112.4
11x218	436 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.7V 1T	538.5	INT 2803 FLT 2969	INT 6481 FLT 6410	82	113.0
10x240	480 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.9V 1T	546.6	INT 2901 FLT 3136	INT 6708 FLT 6626	81	114.7
11x240 (2.64GHz)	Highest CPU/Mem Performance	2.5-3-3-6 2.9V 1T	586.0	INT 2976 FLT 3214	INT 7083 FLT 7007	75	124.1

To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.

The Premier actually did a bit better than specified at DDR400 with stable 2.5-3-2-6 timings. It is also worth noting that Premier was stable with CAS 2.5 timings all the way to the memory speed limit of DDR480. This is particularly outstanding performance for a memory that actually sells for $121.

Aida 32 is now available as Everest Home Edition, a free download from www.lavalys.com. Everest has been very useful in measuring read/write performance and memory latency.

OCZ PC3200 Premier (DDR400) 2x512Mb Double-Bank Everest 1.51
CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz	Memory Speed	Memory Timings & Voltage	Everest READ MB/s	Everest WRITE MB/s	Everest Latency ns
12x200	400 DDR	2.5-3-2-6 2.6V 1T	5795	1948	47.1
11x218	436 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.7V 1T	6122	1998	44.6
10x240	480 DDR	2.5-3-3-6 2.9V 1T	6661	2217	44.3
11x240 (2.64GHz)	Highest CPU/Mem Performance	2.5-3-3-6 2.9V 1T	6668	2710	40.3

With OCZ Premier covering a broader range of memory speeds from 400 to 480, there is more potential to see the true impact of memory speed on performance. With memory timings at a consistent 2.5-3-3 and CPU speed at a constant 2.4GHz, any performance deltas are the result of true performance differences. As we move from 400 to 480 - a 20% speed increase - memory read improves by 15%, write improves by almost 40%, and latency drops by about 17%.

However, these improvements in synthetic memory benchmarks are not reflected by similar improvements in benchmarks with real games. Improving memory speed by 20% - from 400 to 480 - at the same CPU speed improves gaming performance by just 2% to 3%. Clearly, we are getting a better performance increase than this in real-world performance with faster CPU speed. You can see this in the 10% CPU speed increase from 10x240 to 11x240 at the same memory timings. This 10% CPU Speed increase improves gaming FPS by about 8%.