Final thoughts

Reaching the end of this review we're left with a double conclusion, in my opinion. The easy conclusion is this: no, your pc setup will not run any faster with 8Gb of memory instead of four, or two. This is true when giving your pc "normal" day to day use, with the vast majority of applications.

There's an easy way to check this by the way: when you see that Vista (or XP64 for that matter) does not ever use the full amount of your installed memory (be it 2Gb or 4Gb), it will not make much sense for you to upgrade to 8Gb. There are an increasing number of applications though that do benefit from, let's say, 4Gb of memory.

Games are a principal example, where the faster load times of your maps in a FPS game can make the difference between life or death. Another common example is Photoshop, where the difference between 4Gb and 2Gb can make the life of a design professional a whole lot easier. Even though we could not measure any speed improvements in our testing, this is only caused by the fact that we never reached the limits of our installed memory size, even with the 2Gb Dominator kit.

There's another way to look at things though, which brings me to my second conclusion: 8Gb of memory is not any slower than 4Gb, or 2Gb. This is actually better news than you think, as you do not need to fear any more that a fully loaded pc setup will slow your memory subsystem down. Our test kit of the day is the shining example of this, as OCZ have done an excellent job with bringing the latencies of their memory down, while providing some very nice overclocking headroom at the same time.

Furthermore, as memory requirements of applications are ever growing (do not fear : they won't go down again !), we are swiftly approaching a point where the basic memory configuration of any new pc will be 4Gb. Suddenly, 8Gb does not sound like a lot then, does it, especially when you're an enthusiast that likes to stay ahead of things.

To conclude: today, we're still quite happy with 2Gb, however when looking at tomorrow, I'm quite happy with 4Gb or even 8Gb. I for one will not go back to 2Gb any more, not ever.

Let's go over our initial beliefs once more :

1. 8 Gb of memory is hard to find, from any manufacturer

2. 8 Gb of memory is very slow

3. 8Gb of memory is very expensive

4. 8 Gb of memory is not compatible with my motherboard (though it should be).

5. 8 Gb of memory is too much - I'll never need that much in my (computer's) lifetime.

So far we've covered and overcome all of the above, except for one: price ! A delicate point, no doubt, but rest assured, OCZ has tried there best on this point as well. When looking at the US prices, you can find this memory kit slightly above $210 now (Froogle), in Europe this kit can be had for less than € 150,- (Example : komplett.be). This is another indication that the expensive days of DDR2 are long over, and that consumers have great choice now when it comes to finding excellent value-for-money memory kits.



Conclusions

So in the end, here's our take on the OCZ PC6400 Platinum 8Gb kit :

8Gb of memory for yesterday's 2Gb prices.
Excellent performance compared to 4Gb or 2Gb kits
Surprising overclockability
Great compatibility, and there's always the OCZ support forums to help you out.
No nonsense look
Lifetime warranty with proven OCZ service

Might not be compatible with all motherboards (no blame to OCZ for trying though)
DDR2 is on the way out - DDR3 is on the rise, so grab a kit while you can ;-)


Thank you !

At this point a very well deserved thank you goes out to Tobias from OCZ Technology, who was kind enough to lend us another great DDR2 kit for a test drive, and I hope he will continue his trust in our site as a review platform for years to come.

Special thanks also to Tony "Bigtoe" Leach from OCZ, who helped me out with a new - Asus ready - spd for these modules, so I could drive them to 1000Mhz and beyond. Tony's always there to help, I think OCZ can never be reminded enough, the difference this one man makes. Thanks Tony !

I hope you liked this little review of the 8Gb Platinum kit. I'm signing off now, we've got some very interesting products in the pipeline, so thanks for reading and see you soon!