OCZ DDR Booster Review

Memory by JNav89GT @ 2004-09-27

Want to push your memory voltage way beyond what your motherboard has to offer without the need of a soldering iron? OCZ has just the thing; we take a closer look at their DDR Booster which can increase the vDIMM up to 3.9v! An overclocker?s dream come true?

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System Setup & Testing

System Setup

Jnav89GT's Test Setup
CPU AMD Athlon FX53 S939
Mainboard MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Memory 2 x 256Mb PC3500 Lvl2 Mushkin
Video Leadtek TNT2


After crossing my fingers I hit the power button and was greeted with the friendly sound of my CRT monitor coming on, eluding to a successful post. Not one to beat about the bush I thought I'd immediately push the pedal a bit and see what the OCZ Booster could give me.

Previously, I could only get 225 MHz out of this kit of Mushkin PC3500 Level II BH-5 ram on this board, at the bios limit of 2.85v on the vdimm. Setting the unit was so simple and I immediately found that a slight clockwise turn yielded me 3.1v per the LED's.

Madshrimps (c)


I set HTT bus to 240 with 1:1 ram and timings set to Cas2 2:2:10, 1T. The system went straight to windows and didn't hiccup at all. A nice 15 MHz jump with some added vdimm is nothing to sneeze at. I got greedy and loaded up ClockGen and attempted 245 MHz HTT and while I could benchmark the system wasn't rock solid stable. A slight twist of the magic dial later and 3.3v was gracing my precious Mushkin bringing those naughty electrons back in line. Stability returned and I was once again left for wanting more.

Madshrimps (c)


ClockGen begged me for more and I obliged. 250 MHz HTT was conquered but again took a slight bump in vdimm via the OCZ booster, this time to 3.4, as much as I dare go for fear of damaging something.

Madshrimps (c)


Ideally, I would have had my 6800GT in this system, but my Asus had a date with the Geforce and unfortunately time didn't allow me to complete tasks on that setup prior to the completion of this article, and my having to send the OCZ booster back to my friend who loaned it to me to test.
As you can see below, SiSoft Sandra shows a nice steady gain in memory scores as memory frequency increases. No surprises here really! The Booster allowed me to scale memory MHz from a decent 225mhz up to 250mhz at Cas2 2:2:10 settings.

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)

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