Overclocking
In terms of raw clockspeed DDR3-1800 is pretty much the limit for retail modules at the moment. Some manufacturers have been able to create 1866MHz products but they are few and far between so there was a doubt in the labs about much we could squeeze out of these.
Despite their already high operating speed both sets of memory pleasantly surprised us with their ability to overclock. The chips on both sets of modules are Micron Z9 and as a result the maximum overclocks are similar, but not identical.
All of the Overclocking was performed at 2.1v as higher voltages did not improve our ability to use tighter timings or additional MHz.
| |
Timings Used |
Voltage Used |
Speed Achieved |
| OCZ |
8-8-8-24 |
2.1v |
2010 |
| OCZ |
5-5-4-12 |
2.1v |
1333 |
| OCZ |
7-7-7-20 |
2.0v |
1800 |
| Kingston |
8-8-8-24 |
2.1v |
2000 |
| Kingston |
5-5-5-12 |
2.1v |
1333 |
| Kingston |
7-7-7-20 |
2.0v |
1800 |
Our first test was to see how high each of the products would overclock with their advertised timings and the result was 2010MHz for OCZ with 2000MHz exactly for Kingston. Each was completely stable through hours of testing with the above speeds but anything faster resulted in occasional memory errors.
The next test was to see how tight we could get the memory timings whilst sticking to the standard DDR3 speed of 1333MHZ. The results for this test also slightly favoured the OCZ modules. With timings of 5-5-4-12 they compared favourably to the Kingston on 5-5-5-12.
Our final test was to find out if either set of sticks could match Corsairs Dominator timings of 7-7-7-20 at DDR3-1800. With both sets of memory this was no problem and the timings were achieved using the same voltage Corsair require, 2.0v.
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