In the past year, we have seen lots of memory rated at DDR500, so you may wonder why we are reviewing a new DDR500 memory today when there are now a few rare modules rated as high as DDR600. The answer is pretty simple, since OCZ PC4000 VX Gold is the only memory that we have ever seen rated at DDR500 2-2-2. While it is rated at DDR500 at these extraordinary 2-2-2 timings, it also carries a very high rated voltage of 3.3V - far beyond what most motherboards can supply.

A quick check of orbs at FutureMark will show that this new VX is the fast darling of the extreme overclocking market. For those who wondered why DFI included voltages to 4.0V in their new nForce4 Ultra and SLI motherboards, the answer is OCZ VX memory. With VX needing voltages as high as 3.7V to really reach top performance at certain speeds, the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR and DFI LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D are the first production motherboards to support the kind of extreme voltages needed by VX without modification.

With this promise of extraordinary DDR500 2-2-2 performance, we were very interested to see if this performance promise was real. Have we finally reached DDR500 with the fastest timings available? The answers in our benchmarks are very interesting.

OCZ EL PC4000 VX Gold
Comments Locked

67 Comments

View All Comments

  • Lymphatik - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link

    Hi I would like to know if u think that thoose dimms could be enough cooled by a 120 mm fan in extraction and a 120 mm fan from a power suply

    Because i would like to put thoose dimm in antec Sonata and as it's a small case i don't know if i will have enough space to put a fan
  • Lymphatik - Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - link

  • OCedHrt - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link

    Figured it out, seems like the cpu speed plays a role here. 2.25 ghz maxes out at 6600-6700. 2.34 gets 6900-7000. I wonder if going even higher will set a new bandwidth record.
  • OCedHrt - Tuesday, March 22, 2005 - link

    Hmm, I can't seem to duplicate the results here and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I have 2 sticks of pc3200 ocz vx and a dfi ultra (non-sli). I have the ram running at ddr500 at 2-2-6-2 T1 @3.3v and sandra reports a bandwidth of 6000-6100. The weird part is that sandra reports a timing of 2T but if I drop the timing from 1T to 2T in the bios, the results drop to 5700 so I'm pretty sure 1T is enabled. Any ideas?
  • zumbi9in - Saturday, March 19, 2005 - link

    I would like you to help me with a MotherBoard/RAM question.



    I’m about to buy a DFI Lanparty NFORCE 4 Ultra MB with 2 GB of RAM.

    This machine will be for audio sampling and recording, and some gaming too J



    I’m worried if it can run 2 GB of RAM at DDR400, I don’t know if it will drop the memory speed with this config.



    I would like to buy 4x512 KINGSTON PC3200 ULTRA LL 2-2-2-5, but as they are double sided, maybe they will run at DDR333

    The 2nd option would be 2x1024 of OCZ memory PC 3200 3-3-3-7 OCZ4001024PF, is its performance good with this latency?



    I have searched lots of forums and didn’t find a final word about this issue.



    What would be the best performance choice? Do you think it can work?



    Thank you very much,

    Alexandre Zumbi.
  • Rand - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - link

  • ozzimark - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - link

    #60-

    iirc, the dfi was tuned for tccd and bh-5/vx.
    other stuff that overclocks somewhat does terribly on the dfi, that includes ballistix's micron 5b-g chips.
  • L3p3rM355i4h - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - link

    hmm...good performance, but also a lot of questions. How well does ballistix do on the mobo?
  • Quanticles - Wednesday, March 9, 2005 - link

    For everyone hung up on the on-board memory controller...

    The motherboard will make a difference for the on-board memory controller, not because of the chipset, but due to the characteristics of the routing. The type of material used, the thickness and width of the copper traces, and how well the traces are matched in length, will all make a huge difference in signal integrity. Even differences in what layers of the board you route to make a difference, and what power plains they're coupled against are. The list goes on...

    DFI put a lot more effort into their routing, and it makes a significant difference.
  • slashbinslashbash - Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - link

    #56 - Wow. Thanks for pointing this out. This review is bogus. I hope that you cc'd Mr. Shimpi on that e-mail.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now