Configuration:
The
OCZ Technology PC3-10666 Gold Edition 2GB DDR3 Kit was installed in a system with the following components for this review:
» Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor
» Gigabyte P35C-DS3R motherboard
» eVGA 7900GTO PCI Express graphics card
» OCZ Technology ProXStream 1000W Power Supply
» Thermaltake Eureka Super-Tower case
» 1x 80GB Seagate SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» 1x 250GB Seagate SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» 1x 80GB Hitachi SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» Pioneer SATA DVD/CDRW
» Windows XP Professional SP2 and Windows Vista Ultimate
This system is used occasionally for gaming, however most of the time it is used as a general home system designed for Internet, encoding video/music, graphics editing, and a homework machine for my son. Generally I do not overclock this system as the typical applications that are used on it would not benefit from an aggressive overclock.
The motherboard was left at its default settings, a FSB of 266MHz, and the memory set to SPD. The BIOS reported the memory running at 1066MHz, which is below the maximum rated speed of 1333MHz. The BIOS also showed that the memory was running slightly tighter timings at the down-graded speed of 8-8-8-20 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS). I booted into Windows Vista where Everest Ultimate Edition 4.0 verified the memory was running at 1066MHz.
Overclocking:
This particular motherboard is only capable of running DDR3 at 1333MHz in an overclock state. I was confident I could reach a 333MHz FSB, which would in turn overclock the memory to 1333MHz. I was able to successfully run 100% stable at 334MHz only by adjusting the FSB. However, at 335MHz the system would not boot, and would revert back to 266MHz (which this motherboard is designed to do).
Based on the findings while trying to overclock, testing will be conducted on this memory at three different speeds; the default of 1066MHz, a slightly overclocked speed of 1250MHz (to match the maximum overclock of a DDR2 kit), and the maximum speed of 1333MHz.
