OCZ PC3200 Plat. Rev. 2: Has anybody actually achieved 290 MHz with it in an Athlon64 system?

[lvknguyen]

Hi there,

I just finished putting together my first Athlon64 system. Here is my rig:

Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz 512KB 130 nm Socket 939 Rev. DH7-CG (ADA3400DEP4AZ)
Thermalright XP-90 + Panaflo 92mm FBA09A12L1A
Asus A8V Deluxe Rev. 2.00
512MBx2 OCZ PC3200 Plat. Rev. 2
Enermax Whisper EG465P-VE
ATI AIW 8500DV
WD2000JB
Lite-On DVD LTD163D

The Athlon 64 3400+ proves to be a good overclocker, seemingly stable at 250x10= 2500 MHz with 1.65V Vcore. (I've been running Prime95 on it for over 2 hours now). The problem I'm having right now is with my OCZ memory sticks. I bought them after reading the review here at AnandTech, that praised them for their the high overclocking potential. It seems to be not the case for me though.

First of all, I cannot match Anandtech's results at all except for that at 400 DDR speed. At HTT = 218 MHz (436 DDR),I have to relax timing to 2-3-3-10 (instead of 2-3-2-10 obtained by Anandtech) and increase Vmem to 2.8V (the Asus A8V only has 2.6v, 2.7V and 2.8V options) for them to pass Memtest86 test. At HTT = 240 MHz (480 DDR), I get errors in Memtest86 even after relaxing timing to 2.5-4-4-10 (compared to of 2.5-3-3-10 obtained by Anandtech). Only with 2T command rate can my sticks pass Memtest86 at 2.5-3-3-10, with a huge hit in memory performance. Any thing above 240 MHz basically requires 2T command rate, which I don't want. In order to eliminate other limiting factors, I did change the LDT ratio to x2 and CPU multiplier accordingly to stay below 2200 MHz, which is the rated speed of my CPU.

I would like to have your comments/advice as well as overclocking experience with this particular memory. I originally had high hope with them but now I am a little bit disappointed. Thank.

 

[Soulkeeper]

i would chalk it up to luck
don't buy anything expecting those kinda speeds
and those timings are horrible anyways

 

[lvknguyen]

Soulkeeper, you said those timings were horrible. In which way? What timings are better? Would you care to elaborate? Thanks.

 

[FinalFantasy]

It's not hard to hit 290 FSB with that memory and decent cooling, just take some time to go through all of your bios settings/volts/etc etc etc and change some stuff around. Look up overclocking on the web/forums/etc and AT has an overclocking guide in it's forums somewhere.

BTW...those timings are not horrible...the biggest difference in performance you'll see in latency timings is +/- 5%, if that.

 

[Mik3y]

Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
i would chalk it up to luck
don't buy anything expecting those kinda speeds
and those timings are horrible anyways

timings dont really matter on amd64 platforms. because of the short pipelines and integrated memory controller, there is no real performance difference at all between the loosest timings and tightest ones. 1% on memory performance is totally negligable.

 

[Shimmishim]

try the other two slots...

try 1 stick at a time...

there are still lots of options available...

you may have 1 bad stick... not completely out of the question

also... running 2 x 512 at 290 is pretty tough.... did AT's review use 2x512s or 2x256s? cuz that's a big difference

for higher htt's you'll definitely need 2T (a lot of the times) for double-sided dimms (such as 512 meg sticks)

 

[lvknguyen]

OK, am I correct to assume that probably nobody in this forum has actually gotten the wonderous overclocking result of reaching 290 MHz with 2.5-4-3-10-1T timings that Wesley Fink achieved with the OCZ PC3200EL Plat. Rev. 2? The reason I ask because if it's is "Mission Impossible" then I should stop trying to do that and start enjoying the new system that I just built . Big thanks to those who care to comment on this thread.