OCZ 3700 Gold Rev. 3: DDR500 Value for Athlon 64 & Intel 478

AMD Performance Test Configuration

This memory test is the first benchmarking on the new Athlon 64 memory test bed. Since we have found DDR memory to perform very differently on the memory controller with Athlon 64 chips, we will be including Athlon 64 benchmarks in all future memory reviews.

The A64 test bed includes components that have been proven in Socket 939 Athlon 64 benchmarking, such as the Gold Editors Choice MSI K8N Neo2, the completely unlocked Socket 939 FX53, and the OCZ Power Stream 520 Power Supply. Since the Athlon 64 tests represent a new series of DDR testing, we have chosen the current generation nVidia 6800 Ultra video card for benchmarking. We have found the 6800 Ultra to be a particularly good match to nVidia nForce3 Ultra motherboards.

All other basic test conditions attempted to mirror those used in our earlier Intel memory reviews. However, test results are not directly comparable to tests performed on the Intel test bed.

AMD nForce3 Ultra Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s):	AMD FX53 Athlon 64 (2.4GHz, Socket 939, Dual Channel, 1000HT)
RAM:	2 x 512MB OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 3 (DS)
Hard Drives	Seagate 120GB PATA (IDE) 7200RPM 8MB Cache
PCI/AGP Speed	Fixed at 33/66
Bus Master Drivers:	nVidia nForce Platform Driver 4.24 (5-10-2004)
Video Card(s):	nVidia 6800 Ultra 256MB, 256MB aperture, 1024x768x32
Video Drivers:	nVidia Forceware 61.77
Power Supply:	OCZ Power Stream 520W
Operating System(s):	Windows XP Professional SP1
Motherboards:	MSI K8N Neo2

We have found the fastest performance on AMD Athlon 64 chipsets (nForce3, VIA K8T800 PRO) to be achieved at Cycle Time or tRAS of 10. Athlon 64 platform benchmarks were therefore run with the tRAS timing of 10 for all A64 benchmarks.

Test Settings

The FX53 is completely unlocked, something not currently available with Intel processors. This allowed a different approach to memory testing which truly measures performance differences in memory speed alone. All tests were run with CPU speed as close to the specified 2.4GHz of the FX53 as possible, with CPU speed/Memory Speed increased at lower multipliers to achieve 2.4Ghz. This approach allows the true measurement of the impact of higher memory speed and timings on performance, since CPU speed is fixed.

The following settings were tested with the OCZ 3700 Gold Rev 3 on Athlon 64:

1. 12x200/DDR400 - the highest stock memory speed supported on 875/865 and K8T800/nF3/SiS755 motherboards
2. 11x218/DDR436 - a ratio near the standard DDR533 speed
3. 10x240/DDR480 - a memory speed near the rating of OCZ 3700 Gold Rev 3
4. 9x267/DDR533 - a standard memory speed used in testing other high-speed memory
5. 8x300/DDR600 - a standard for future memory speed testing. Few if any current memories will reach this speed
6. Highest Stable Overclock - the highest settings we could achieve with this memory and other memory we have tested

We ran our standard suite of memory performance benchmarks - Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory-Radar, Super Pi 2M, and Sandra 2004 Standard and UnBuffered.