OCZ 2GB PC6400 Special Ops Edition Urban Elite Review

Memory by thorgal @ 2006-12-11

For those that do not want to break the bank just for a pair of performance memory sticks, we´ve got a promising PC6400 DDR2 kit from OCZ, let´s find out how it stacks up to the competition.

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Performance at 800Mhz

Benchmark suite

As soon as we ensure full stability on all of the cas settings as shown on the previous page, we are ready to run our benchmark suite. This suite consists out of the following applications:

  • Sisoft S.A.N.D.R.A. 2007
  • Lavalys Everest 2.20
  • Maxon Cinebench 9.5
  • MadOnion/Futuremark 3D Mark 2001SE
  • Futuremark 3D Mark 2006
  • Futuremark PC Mark 2005
  • Superpi 1.5, Xtremesystems edition
  • Game 1 : 3D Realms Prey demo ; benchmark by Hardware OC
  • Game 2 : Monolith F.E.A.R. Multiplayer demo, built-in benchmark


    Bandwidth at 800/1066Mhz settings

    To measure the bandwidth and latency performance of the memory kit we use two standard applications.

    First is the bandwidth for which we use SiSoftware's Sandra application. The System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant is an information and diagnostic utility which has a very handy benchmark suite, in which you can compare your system to a range of other reference systems. The Bandwidth is one of the available benchmarks :

    Madshrimps (c)


    First I want to point out that the above graphs are not really fair. To be honest, all the graphs you will see today are not very fair towards the memory kit of the day. As this is the first PC6400 kit that gets inserted into our tables, performance may seem to fall behind. Nothing is further from the truth though: this kit is actually performing very well, and you should have a look at them through your wallet: the PC8000/8500 kits previewed earlier all cost 50-75% more than this kit, so they're in a different league all together.

    This being said, have a look at the blue bar in the above graph. As we mentioned, at 800Mhz the OCZ kit is working with 4-4-3-15 timings, whereas the more expensive kits were all able to work at cas 3 timings at this speed. This has its repercussions of course on the bandwidth, but not as big as you would think. The PC6400 Urban Elite trails the other kits by (only) 110Mb/s, but what's more important, it beats our generic kit by 12%...The 1066Mhz result remains empty of course, as the Urban Elite came up short for this test by just a few Mhz.

    Latency at 800/1066Mhz settings

    Second up is the latency test for which we use the Everest application from Lavalys.

    Madshrimps (c)


    When we look at latencies, the cas 3 vs. cas 4 differences seem more pronounced. Bare in mind that the generic modules perform at 533Mhz, also at cas 4, so what you're seeing here is pure speed advantage, without any latency differences. This results in a 13.5% advantage for the Urban Elite over the generic modules, but they trail their more expensive brothers by a larger margin as with bandwidth.

    Application benchmarks at 800Mhz

    Let's have a look if the differences in bandwidth and latency are confirmed in our application benchmarks:

    Madshrimps (c)


    In this graph you should look at the purple graph which represents the Urban Elite kit. As you can see, the differences are there, but they are not pronounced across the board. For SuperPi, the tighter latencies of the PC800/8500 parts seem to make a difference, as well as in FEAR performance. In the Futuremark benches the differences are less pronounced, to the point of being barely relevant.

    Let's have a look how the PC6400 SOE "Urban Elite" compares when we look at overclocking ->
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    Comment from jort @ 2006/12/11
    great review thorgal nicely written and edited john

     

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