PC3200 kits compared at maximum overclocks

I was able to raise the FSB to 230Mhz (at CL2.5 3-3-8 using 2.68v) and had a completely stable system, this alone is quite remarkable as it didn’t require any tweaking what so ever.

Now the weird thing is that when I dropped the timings to CL3 4-4-8 I still ended up with a maximum overclock of 230Mhz, increasing the voltage didn’t help either. So I hit wall @230Mhz on the DFI RDX motherboard.

To see if it was the motherboard or the memory holding me back I installed the G.Skill kit in my second test system which consists of:

AMD Opteron 148

DFI NF4 Ultra-D

ATI X1600 XT

The result matched those of the RDX closely, maximum overclock 233Mhz @ CL2.5 3-3-8 with 2.68v.

I reseated the sticks in the DFI RDX and continued to run my benchmark suite:













Conclusive Thoughts

After talking to various G.Skill technicians and reading up on the user experiences with this memory at different forums I’m convinced my test results here are quite representative for the G.Skill NS-series, their overclocking ability varies from 220-240Mhz and this always at the apparently fixed timings of CL2.5 3-3-x @ 2.68v DDR.

Street price in Europe hovers around ~€170 (USA gets it cheaper $145 - Newegg) which makes these modules be quite the “bang for the buck”.

I like to thank G.Skill for letting us test drive their latest mainstream kit.

Questions/Comments: forum thread