X-bit labs

DDR3 Accelerates: DDR3-1800 SDRAM Roundup (page 4)

Category: Memory

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 11/06/2007 | 05:48 PM ]

OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition

Corsair’s major competitor, OCZ Technologies couldn’t stay aside when it came to launching their DDR3-1800 (PC3-14400) SDRAM. However, the OCZ solution is in no way a full analogue of the Corsair kit we have just discussed. The difference immediately catches your eye once you check out the specs.

OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition kit includes a pair of 1GB modules and is designed to work at 1800MHz with less aggressive timings than Corsair Dominator TWIN3X2048-1800C7DF G: 8-8-8-24. However, the nominal voltage of the OCZ modules is lower as well: it is set at 1.95V.

OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition is shipped in a standard plastic package:

The cooling solution topping OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition is not as innovative as the Corsair one, but it also looks highly efficient. The heat-spreaders stuck to the module from both sides are meshed copper plates designed according to OCZ’s XTC (Extreme Thermal Convection) technology that is well-known for its cooling efficiency. The heat-spreaders are of platinum color and are decorated with a stylized Z³ logo.

There is a sticker on one side of each module that reads the product part number, frequency, capacity and default timings. It was very interesting to notice that the sticker info on the kit we received was slightly different from what the official web-site claims to be the OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition specifications.

According to the info on the company web-site here are the complete technical parameters of the OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition kit:

Note that OCZ also promises that its memory modules will work just fine with higher 2.0V voltage setting. Also, OCZ web-site reports that PC3-14400 Platinum Edition memory is specifically optimized for Asus mainboards.

The SPD of this memory kit is pretty standard, everything here is aimed at the modules’ compatibility with any mainboard without any voltage increase. At this time OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition have no XMP support.

Our practical experiments with OCZ modules revealed that even though they use the same chips as the memory kits from other manufacturers, their behavior is completely unique. For example, with the timings set at 7-7-7-20 and voltage of 2.0V OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition cannot run at 1800MHz frequency. With these settings the maximum stable frequency was only 1760MHz. The best timings combination for these modules to remain stable at 1800MHz and 2.0V voltage is 8-8-7-24.

Therefore, the results obtained with even more aggressive timings of 6-6-6-18 are not surprising at all. In this case the maximum frequency we managed to reach on OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition was pretty modest: 1396MHz.

However, when we set the default timings, namely 8-8-8-24, and raised the voltage to 2.0V the memory worked perfectly at 1876MHz, which is very close to what we saw by Corsair modules with identical settings.

The complete list of our experimental results for OCZ PC3-14400 Platinum Edition is given in a table below:

Unfortunately, out attempts to get this memory to work with even higher voltage settings failed. As we found out, the memory kit we had in our lab dropped its frequency potential once the voltage exceeded 2.0V. I believe that insufficient heat dissipation from the memory chips could be the reason for that.