Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules
by Wesley Fink on October 1, 2004 12:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Test Results: OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 3
To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and RTCW had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.| OCZ 3700 Gold Rev 3 (DDR466) - 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 | 2-3-3-10 2.5V 1T |
503.3 | INT 2577 FLT 2673 |
INT 6063 FLT 6014 |
82 | 109.0 |
| 11x218 | 438 DDR | 2-3-3-10 2.8V 1T |
510.0 | INT 2687 FLT 2845 |
INT 6413 FLT 6350 |
81 | 109.8 |
| 10x240 | 480 DDR | 2.5-3-3-10 2.6V 1T |
517.6 | INT 2814 FLT 2985 |
INT 6659 FLT 6551 |
80 | 111.2 |
| 9x267 | 533 DDR | 3-3-3-10 2.7V 1T |
524.9 | INT 3013 FLT 3234 |
INT 6959 FLT 6871 |
79 | 112.5 |
| 9x273(2.46GHz) | Highest Mem Speed 546 DDR |
3-3-3-10 2.85V 1T |
536.2 | INT 3071 FLT 3298 |
INT 7110 FLT 7002 |
77 | 115.1 |
| 9x273(2.46GHz) | HIGHEST Performance 546 DDR |
3-3-3-10 2.85V 1T |
536.2 | INT 3071 FLT 3298 |
INT 7110 FLT 7002 |
77 | 115.1 |
The Hynix-based 3700 Gold Rev. 3 takes a different approach to memory performance. As a value memory, it does not perform as well as Samsung TCCD at DDR400, but it is very competitive with the best memory available in the DDR440 to DDR533 range. In this "sweet spot", range Rev. 3 is very good. At the top, R3 also does not reach quite as far as the best TCCD, but look closely at the test results. OCZ Gold Rev. 3 achieved the same DDR546 memory speed at both 2T and 1T Command Rates. In other words, Command Rate did not seem to affect the memory overclock. This 273 CPU frequency is very close to the best 1T settings that we could achieve with TCCD, so Gold R3 performs nearly as well as the top memory in the roundup, looking at the results for Highest Memory Performance.
In the end, you should look at the price of OCZ 3700 Gold Rev. 3 compared to Samsung TCCD modules. If the Gold R3 is cheaper, it is a good alternative to Samsung TCCD or Crucial Ballistix. We can say with confidence that the latest Hynix DT-D5 chips do perform very well on Athlon 64, with none of the performance penalty that we have seen in the past with some memory chips on Athlon 64.
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Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I ordered from Newegg today. I did not see a place on their site for just a 512mb stick. I ordered the 1gb kit.http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
saechaka - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
hey bugler where are you ordering your ocz platinum rev. 2 from? is there any way to find a place where you can order 1 512mb stick only?darkwaffle - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I'm curious, for a socket754 user, is there really any reason why we couldn't (generally) follow these results? I realize that some of the overclocks may not be able to be achieved, but is it safe to say that the modules that perform highly on s939 will also perform highly also on s754 (In comparison to the other modules)?Wesley Fink - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
#32 -Corsair and Kingston DDR400 2-2-2 were both included in our recent 2-2-2 roundup. Frankly we did test both Kingston and Corsair in the early going for these tests and both did quite poorly on the Athlon 64 test bed compared to other recent TCCD modules.
However, the Kingston and Corsair were early TCCD dimms and we are confident more recent dimms from these two major manufacturers would perform more like the OCZ, Geil, and G. Skill. Unfortunately we didn't have those more recent dimms to test, and we felt reporting what we had found would have been very unfair to Corsair and Kingston, who both produce excellent memory products.
ImJacksAmygdala - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I'm sure OCZ and Geil are great memory for A64, but all I got out of that article was buy OCZ memory, buy Geil Memory, o ya and buy a top of the line OCZ power supply....What about Corsair and Kingston? How do they compete?
This site is smothered with advertisement. Why make it so obvious in the articles? Thanks for the article though...
einsig - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
And re: the robust +12v rails. They are most crucial for A64 overlocking. I have an Enermax with 31A on two +12v rails and it makes the world of difference.einsig - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
One thing that really needs to be stated is that Clawhammer cores automatically set a command rate of 2T at speeds from DDR400 and up. you need to use A64 Tweaker to make the change (can be loaded at startup). I have a Clawhammer 3400+ that has been run on an ASUS K8V Deluxe and MSI K8N Neo Platinum. I was running XMS 2x512 3200LL Corsair, but it didn't want to OC even on the K8N (nothing OCs on the K8V because of the chipset). I now run Crucial ballistix PC4000 and it is incredible, however (as the article states) the command rate of 1T is really ideal. They should just tell people how to set that if they have a Clawhammer.Shinei - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
What's really exciting is that the two DDR600 overclockers are board-limited before they top out in speed (K8N Neo2s go to 300MHz on the RAM). I'd like to see what the RAM could do on a more extreme overclocking board, since it seems like these new RAM chips are capable of pushing on to DDR667 or even higher...With that said, I agree that the prices for this stuff is getting ridonculous. Cheaper RAM means more sales and increased usage of that 8 exobyte storage capacity the Athlon 64 has. ;)
Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Thank you AnandTech. I have been waiting for greater clarification since you last recommended OCZ 3700 enhanced bandwidth ram and none could be found. I was balancing between that and ballistix. After today's review, I ordered OCZ Plat, rev 2 for the system I am putting together.Now if we could get some reviews and testing of the newer 90 speed AMD processors, hint, hint...
I appreciate this site very much.