Retail Performance

Both the Samsung stock DIMMs and the Lasered DIMMs were assembled from unbinned chips – chips pulled prior to sorting by performance. The final step is sorting the lasered chips and selecting the best-performing chips for the best-performing memory. Chips that do not meet the highest performance levels are used in lower-speed products.

The chips are also only one component in the final performance of the product. The PCB on which the chips are mounted is very important to performance. Six-layer boards are generally lower in noise and the quality of the PCB can significantly impact the performance of the memory DIMM. The programming of the SPD is also very important in determining the final performance of the memory module.

Using the best lasered chips, we finally get to the performance of the completed Retail OCZ 3700 GOLD. In this case, we looked at Maximum Speed at SPD timings, Maximum Speed at CAS2, which is faster than rated SPD CAS of 2.5, and performance at Specifications of DDR466, 2.5-7-3-3.


OCZ3700 GOLD DS 256Mb Performance
Intel 875 Chipset, Dual-Channel, Maximum Overclock
DDR Memory Speed Memory Timings Memory Voltage
(vDIMM)
UNBuffered
Sandra 2003 Memory Test
(MB/Second)
466 Specification
2.5-7-3-3
2.65V 3079 INT
3146 FLT
480 2.0-7-3-3 2.7V 3175 INT
3216 FLT
510 Maximum SPD
2.5-7-3-3
2.8V 3403 INT
3471 FLT


Speed-sorting of chips yields a retail product that now reaches to a speed of DDR510 at stock SPD timings with a voltage increase to 2.8V. We also see that speed-binning is producing even faster CAS 2.0 settings, up to DDR480. Probably the most significant performance improvement from speed-binning is the memory-bandwidth, as measured by the UNBuffered Sandra 2003 Memory Test.

DDR510 is the highest stable setting that we could achieve at SPD timings, but the memory will reach even higher speeds at more relaxed timings. OCZ 3700 GOLD is one of the many included in our evaluation of high-speed DDR500/DDR466 memory modules. Look for the results in 'Searching for the Memory Holy Grail — Part 2'. Our performance comparison of the fastest memory from Corsair, Kingston, Geil, Adata, and OCZ will be published soon.
Post-Laser Performance
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  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 10, 2003 - link

    Spme of You people Deserve to get ripped off by This kind of BS Marketing
    & Fake memory "Companies" who do nothing
    but marketing.

    This Thing exists FOR the US market lol.
    No other market would ever buy any of it.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 10, 2003 - link

    What a ridiculous post by #45. Are you really that narrow? This isn't some criminal court case, we're talking about how memory performs and if it's worth your while. Sure, OCZ's past is suspect, but all of that happened two YEARS ago. It's well known that OCZ has been overhauled since then. The fact that HUNDREDS of OCZ users that have posting on Internet message boards have raved about how great OCZ's latest modules have been and how quick and pleasant their tech support and customer service are should be all the proof you need about anything related to OCZ products and OCZ support.

    Who the hell cares about binning, lasering, splitting, or how any of that crap is done. OCZ memory modules work and have worked well for many many months now. That's the fundamental point of this article. If you can't understand that then you just don't know how companies in this industry work, and that's, well, sad.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 10, 2003 - link

    #45 If someone here has a bad ocz product ,or even in the past had one, they can contact ocz to get it taken care of , oczguy@ocztechnology.com and oczguy2@ocztechnology.com they I am sure will be very helpfull

  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 10, 2003 - link

    If AnandTech wants to make this more believable, they should ask OCZ for an invitation to their "factory" where they bin and send chips to their "third party" lasering people, and where they reassemble things on their PCBs. Find out where they get the PCBs, and have them show you the process of assembly. Ask to see the deed to the building, and verify who the owner is.

    Then find out similar things about these lasering people.

    This is the several dozenth incarnation of OCZ, and their history is all too criminal to ignore. Why are they not standing behind their old products with which they defrauded so many people?

    If you want to earn a good name, you earn it by doing the right thing.

    Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, August 10, 2003 - link

    Hey, I hear Communist China has revolutionized the "raising the dead" technology they've been working on so long. I think I'll see if they can raise the grandparents I never met for me. It's only a few hundred thousand dollars each corpse! Just because the same government murdered over 100 million people in the last 54 years doesn't mean anything! This must be true! I want it to be true!
  • Kishkumen - Saturday, August 9, 2003 - link

    #11 Apparently you read my post, but don't understand simple senteces very well. Maybe if you read it slower next time you'll realize that when I say "I'm sending it back" I probably mean to say "I'm sending it back". You must have the comprehension of a two year old.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 9, 2003 - link

    OCZ gold is returnable , if you bought the wrong products on accident or have any trouble you should email them , oczguy@ocztechnology.com or oczguy2@ocztechnology.com are always helpfull, really nice folks

  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 9, 2003 - link

    hi all,
    Just a tip for all those like myself who bought an Msi 865PE motherboard. I wanted to get the pc 3700 gold ocz, but ocz reps emailed and told me MSI motherboards don't work well in async mode (>400MHz ram). Please remember to email your ram manufacturer before purchasing because ocz gold is not returnable. Hopefully, MSI will make another BIOS release to work well in async.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 9, 2003 - link

    I heard OCZ had a pact with satan , how else could they make the memory run so fast. :-D
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 9, 2003 - link

    Think I will be picking up a pair of these, I have been a fan of OCZ memory for some time,

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