Overclocking

There isn't a motherboard out there which officially supports speeds above DDR2-1066 so in order to reach the recommended settings for the modules being tested today we need to overclock the system. As there isn't that great a difference between 1066mhz and the recommended max speeds we decided to push the modules as far as they would go and provide you with those results.

First up though was a quick test on the OCZ modules which run fine at 4-4-4-12 @800Mhz, the test we thought most interesting to start with would be how high we could overclock the sticks whilst maintaining the tighter timings. We put in the maximum recommended voltage for the product plus a little extra - as the warranty allows this (2.45v) and began raising the FSB. The end result was a speed of DDR2-902mhz.

To reach this overclock we have to change FSB settings and this has an impact on the CPU speed (3311Mhz) which means the results obtained are not comparable to other tests in this review, therefore for information only here are a few results achieved at the overclocked speeds.

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Maximum Overclocks

Our next test was to see how high each product could go if we used the recommended voltages and timings. We looked at the OCZ Gold sticks first and set the timings to 5-6-6-12 in the BIOS as well as supplying 2.45v to the sticks and setting our memory speed at boot to 1066mhz. Our overclocking proved quite successful and we reached DDR2-1150 which is well in excess of the recommended specifications. Switching over to the Corsair modules the timings were returned to timings of 4-4-4-12 and applied 2.4v (.05v less than the OCZ modules). With the Corsair sticks in we were able to reach a memory speed of 1146mhz which is a few mhz slower than the OCZ sticks however is achieved with much tighter timings and as noted above, slightly less voltage.

The results achieved at these settings do of course include an overclock on the FSB and as a result the CPU and are not directly comparable with the DDR2-1066 results. As the overall overclocks between the two products are very close in Mhz it does make the two overclocking results quite comparable so here are our scores.

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In our first overclocking test we again look at FEAR which is a title that should benefit from increased system specs. As expected there is an increase in both sets of results and we do have a clear performance leader in the shape of the Corsair Dominator modules. The average FPS figure is relatively similar between the two products 65fps vs 64fps however in minimum and maximum fps the difference is clearer.

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Moving next to an encoding test we see that the difference in memory timings results in a 6% increase in performance on the Corsair based system. On such a small clip this quite a large increase and on longer clips the time difference would increase significantly.

Overclocking	OCZ (5-6-6-15 @ 1150mhz)	Corsair (4-4-4-12 @ 1146Mhz)
1: Texturiser Test (1)	1.0	0.9
2: CYMK Colour Conversion	1.7	1.5
3: RGB Colour Conversion	1.9	1.8
4: Dust and Scratches	2.5	2.5
5: Watercolour	13.3	13.2
6: Texturiser Test (2)	3.4	3.4
7: Stained Glass	5.9	5.7
8: Lighting Effects	3.2	3.1
9: Mosiac Tiles	10.1	10.0
10: Extrude	32.3	32.1
11: Smart Blur	25.2	25.0
12. Underpainting	20.0	19.9
Total	120.5	119.1

Our final test for this article takes one last look at Photoshop performance, this is a highly demanding benchmark and gives a great indication of possible avenues to improve a real world productivity. In this test the overall time difference was 1.4seconds, this seems quite a small change however if using Photoshop on a regular basis the small differences mount up to create a larger time saving over a period of weeks or months.