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Anyone else thinks OCZ DDR3 RAM is crap? How's this for an alternative?

C

CombatChuk

Platinum Member
Finally got my rig together here's the gist

Intel Core i7 930
MSI X58 Pro-E
ATI Radeon 5870
6GB OCZ DDR3-1600 PC12800 Ram

My motherboard thinks it's DDR3-1066, so when I force it to DDR3-1600 it doesn't even post! So I'm going back to Micro Center to exchange this crap for something better... How's this?

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0332848

This is Kingston's 6GB kit, the timings are a little lax but the price looks good to me

Thanks
 
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Um, this will either be a stupid question or a helpful one:
Have you tried manually setting voltage/timings/ect? You're also aware running 1600 will probably require overclocking on most boards?

My OCZ kits been fine.
 
I'm not a fan of OCZ anything.
My memory favorites are Mushkin, Corsair, G.Skill or Patriot.
My choices always conform to the JEDEC voltage standard for the type of memory I'm buying...
DDR = 2.6v ±0.1
DDR2 = 1.8v ±0.1
DDR3 = 1.5v ±0.075
 
While the quality of OCZ kits may be questionable. With the info provided in the OP it seems you may be misunderstanding performance RAM.

Without XMP profiles, the default RAM speed should* max out at DDR-1066. The 930 does not support DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1600 isn't even a JEDEC spec. Furthermore, and more importantly AFAIK Uncore needs to be twice the DDR speed on Bloomfield processors.

So by forcing DDR-1600 your setting an effective Uncore of 3.2Ghz. I know for a fact my 920 cannot handle 3.2Ghz uncore without extra voltage, so unless you have done the testing, you cannot be sure the RAM is defective.
 
Ben90 said:
While the quality of OCZ kits may be questionable. With the info provided in the OP it seems you may be misunderstanding performance RAM.

Without XMP profiles, the default RAM speed should* max out at DDR-1066. The 930 does not support DDR3-1600, and DDR3-1600 isn't even a JEDEC spec. Furthermore, and more importantly AFAIK Uncore needs to be twice the DDR speed on Bloomfield processors.

So by forcing DDR-1600 your setting an effective Uncore of 3.2Ghz. I know for a fact my 920 cannot handle 3.2Ghz uncore without extra voltage, so unless you have done the testing, you cannot be sure the RAM is defective.
Click to expand...

Well the computer wouldn't post at with the memory set to 800Mhz, and at 666Mhz (DDR3-1333) it would POST but fail Memtest... The CPU voltage is set to auto, which then sends it to about 1.33 V
 
I don't know how OCZ got branded as crap. I wanted to get OCZ DDR3, but changed to Corsair after reading Newegg reviews, and listening to people that says OCZ is generally bad nowadays.

It almost seems as though after the problems they had with their JMicron-based Core brand SSDs, they fell. Hard. Maybe anyone that knows a bit of SSDs and memory was allocated to improving their SSD lineup, hurting other product lines.
 
IntelUser2000 said:
I don't know how OCZ got branded as crap. I wanted to get OCZ DDR3, but changed to Corsair after reading Newegg reviews, and listening to people that says OCZ is generally bad nowadays.

It almost seems as though after the problems they had with their JMicron-based Core brand SSDs, they fell. Hard. Maybe anyone that knows a bit of SSDs and memory was allocated to improving their SSD lineup, hurting other product lines.
Click to expand...

Just my opinion of course but margins in ddr got really really bad a year back or so when everyone was screaming recession...so definitely the profits weren't there in the first place for these performance ram boutiques to keep plowing into salaries of dimm engineers.

And secondly, if you are keen to your career path and you were a dimm engineer at OCZ you'd take notice of what your CEO seems to spend their time talking about and working on (SSD's, not ddr) and you'd see to it that your career path was better aligned with your ceo's technology vision (and migrate to one of those internal ssd engineering job postings).

just my opinion
 
Blain said:
It started years ago.
Click to expand...

You are quite right. It was pretty good at some point though. The OCZ Modstream 450W I still use and the DDR2-800 for the Celeron D and later Core 2 was OCZ.

Tech support used to be really good too. The response times were usually within 48 hours and they replied individually without going into automated services.
 
CombatChuk said:
Well the computer wouldn't post at with the memory set to 800Mhz, and at 666Mhz (DDR3-1333) it would POST but fail Memtest... The CPU voltage is set to auto, which then sends it to about 1.33 V
Click to expand...

Mobos tend to push VCC up with bclock when set to auto, however in my experience I've never seen them scale VTT with memory speed. When purchasing memory that requires you to overclock to use to its full potential, you cannot assume your mobo is going to give it the proper voltage and just use auto.

First your going to have to manually enter in the required voltages/timing for your RAM, then more importantly your going to have to find out how to make sure your processor is okay with the overclock.

It is however very possible you have a bad stick of RAM, but before you go around saying OCZ is horrible, you at least have to try to troubleshoot. Its entirely the same situation if I bought a pair of untied shoes and went around saying Addidas is a horrible company because my shoes don't fit, even though I neglected to tie them.
 
Ben90 said:
Mobos tend to push VCC up with bclock when set to auto, however in my experience I've never seen them scale VTT with memory speed. When purchasing memory that requires you to overclock to use to its full potential, you cannot assume your mobo is going to give it the proper voltage and just use auto.

First your going to have to manually enter in the required voltages/timing for your RAM, then more importantly your going to have to find out how to make sure your processor is okay with the overclock.

It is however very possible you have a bad stick of RAM, but before you go around saying OCZ is horrible, you at least have to try to troubleshoot. Its entirely the same situation if I bought a pair of untied shoes and went around saying Addidas is a horrible company because my shoes don't fit, even though I neglected to tie them.
Click to expand...

Well I did push the voltage to 1.65V per the RAM specifications and manually set the timings but it would still fail.

Good news is I exchanged it out for a like kit and now it's working as advertised. So it does appear that I can "tie shoes"
 
Ya agreed, OCZ DDR3 is garbage at the moment and has been since the launch of i7. Tried OCZ Gold and Gold Low Voltage kits at MicroCenter and couldn't get the kits to be stable at DDR3-1600 @ 1.65V. BSOD non-stop. Had to return them both. During DDR1 and esp. DDR2 with Platinum Revision 2 and OCZ Reapers, OCZ used to rule for price performance ratio (although Corsair produced some amazing DDR2 kits as well, like DDR2-533 that overclocked to DDR2-1066!!!).

Now with Ripjaws and ECO lines, G.Skill completely took over in the price/performance space. It's not just ram though, their OCZ Powerstream series used to be the PSUs to get along with PC Power & Cooling and Seasonic. Now, OCZ doesn't even come up in PSU discussions. Thanks to OCZ, they ruined one of the best PSU manufacturers in the business and replaced their awesome units with the overpriced Z series. At one point their OCZ Rally USB drives were also good (but now mostly everyone caught up and well USB 3.0 is here, and OCZ has 0 USB 3.0 drives....talk about being a market leader...)

The only great thing OCZ makes right now are SSDs: Agility 2 and Vertex 2 series.
 
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CombatChuk said:
Well I did push the voltage to 1.65V per the RAM specifications and manually set the timings but it would still fail.

Good news is I exchanged it out for a like kit and now it's working as advertised. So it does appear that I can "tie shoes"
Click to expand...
Well I'm glad it all worked out. I guess I'm just an old man who is bitter because my uncore sucks. 🙂
 
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