Overclocking Buyer's Guide - August 2004
by Wesley Fink on July 27, 2004 11:24 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
DDR Memory
DDR Recommendation: 1GB Kit (2 X 512MB) OCZ PC3700 EBPrice: $340 shipped
One of the advantages of the new AMD Socket 939 is that it uses regular unbuffered dual-channel memory. This means almost any memory will fit your new Socket 939 system. However, we have found that some memory perform much better in Athlon 64 systems than others, and the overall best Athlon 64 performance that we have found was with OCZ 3700EB, or Extended Bandwidth, memory.
The EB takes a little different approach to memory timings, and runs at 2.5-2-2, at DDR 400. This is still competitive with the best memory available, but by DDR433 to DDR450, the EB becomes the fastest memory that we have tested at that speed. Performance extends well beyond DDR500 and the performance at DR500 is the best that we have tested. Many Athlon 64 boards are picky about memory, but every Athlon 64 board that we have tested so far seems quite content with either 3700EB or 3500EB memory.
In the past year, OCZ has raised their Customer Service standards to among the best in the memory industry. We often get emails reporting very positive Customer Service and quick problem resolution when customers have contacted OCZ directly. OCZ combines that excellent Customer Service with a Lifetime Warranty.
DDR Alternative: 1GB Kit (2 X 512MB) Corsair 3200XL or 3200XL PRO
Price: $300 or $330 shipped
Corsair 3200XL roared on the scene in May with a return of 2-2-2 timings to DDR400. These fast timings were thought to be dead after Winbond discontinued their BH5 memory, but Corsair managed to return 2-2-2 to the market with a new generation of Samsung memory chips. The Corsair is an outstanding match to the alternate DFI 875B LANParty motherboard, and will provide the fastest DDR400 memory performance that you can currently find.
Corsair 3200XL also extends performance all the way to DDR500, so you will have incredible headroom when you select this memory for your system. The Corsair memory also works well on the AMD Athlon 64 platform when we tested it, but performance did not extend quite as far on the AMD platform. It is still a good choice for Athlon 64 machines where extremely high overclocking is not a top concern. While 2-2-2 memory based on Samsung chips is now available from OCZ, Kingston, and Mushkin; Corsair pioneered the return to 2-2-2 and was the first on the market with new memory capable of 2-2-2 timings.
Corsair is the standard by which every Enthusiast Memory manufacturer is measured, and their Customer Service is among the best in any industry. Corsair also provides a Lifetime Warranty on memory products and their "RAM Guy" is a well-known resource for memory problems in many Forums.
Either of these DDR recommendations will work very well on the MSI K8N Neo2, Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, or DFI NFII Ultra Infinity. However, DDR2 memory is required for the Asus P5AD2 Premium.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on DDR memory from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
40 Comments
View All Comments
bluedart - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
It does say the price. Read from the top of the page:AGP Overclocking Recommendation: eVGA 256MB GeForce 6800 GT
Price: $389 shipped
BTW FX53 is a good choice at overclocking. Keep in mind this is with air. But if you utilize other forms of cooling the FX will go even higher, approaching 3GHz with proper cooling (see THG's review). This makes it one FX58. That is absolutely a grand overclock, seeing that FX58 speeds will not be here for another year or so.
danidentity - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
#4: Did you read Anandtech's article on breaking the overclocking lock? Almost all companies have broken it. It is very possible to reach those speeds with the stock HSF.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
devonz - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Why isn't the 6800 GT card in the price list on that page? Or am I missing it somehow?T8000 - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I think recommending an Athlon FX for overclocking is a joke. Those things do not even manage a 5% overclock, and their real world performance is only close to a P4 at 3.4 GHZ, as gaming at 640x480 is not very common among people spending this kind of money. And at a realistic setting of 1600x1200 and 4xFSAA, the CPU is not really the bottleneck in todays games. When you do encoding, where CPU speed does matter in the real world, the P4 is head and shoulders above Athlon FX.yzkbug - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
How about a VALUE OC DDR section? Paying $300+ for 5-10% performance increase over ~$150 regular DDR is a waste, imho.Zebo - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Peferformance------------
1. 2.8 P4C to 3.6 $180
2. A64 3200 to 2.5 $223
Value
--------
1. Duron 1.8 to 2.4 $44
2. Mobile XP to 2.6 $89
:)
Zebo - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Wow recommending a P4C over a moblie barton in the value section.Twice the price for roughly the same OC performance I don't get it. It's the inverse of price to performance. must be an error is all I can imagine.Then recommending a Socket 775 presshot. Lets see this 3.8- 4GHZ OC with stock HSF. I don't think so. Then the overclock lock issues which hav'nt been settled, have they? My understanding is 10% over stock FSB, yeilding about 3.4 Ghz far from 4ghz, the system crashes!! What kind of overclockers choice is that?
chuwawa - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
Perhaps it's time to start recommending the Athlon64 3000+ for the value OC alternative.bluedart - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
This is a great guide for overclocking, although I believe that there needs to be some more acutal testing with the 755 and 939 sockets to give us a better picture of how they perform. It is especially difficult when PCIxpress and ddr2 aren't widely available yet.If anyone else has some REAL data on overclocking these new platforms, I would like to see those posts.
Currently I am making a heat sink out of synthetic Diamond (better heat transfer than copper and silver by 2x) and will be testing it on the FX system. If there are any other reccommendations I would be more than happy to hear them.
expletive - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I would cast a vote for the A64 3500+. If it can reach 2.6 like an FX53 at half the price that's tough to beat.The 3500+ is currently retailing for $390 shipped online. I know thats not quite a 'value' but to get FX53 gaming performance for half the price, that can't be denied....