Summing it up
Increases in PC speeds is inevitable. Premium system memory manufacturers' job is to ensure that they stay at least a step or two in front of what mom and pop can buy in decent OEM PCs. That's one reason why advancing memory speeds are announced every quarter or so. Another reason has to do with pride. We're sure that OCZ don't want to play second fiddle to anyone. That, in part, is why OCZ were quick to announce dual channel PC-4000 memory. It's not just a case of a manufacturer being brave or silly, either. DDR500 RAM is readily usable in at least two chipsets, both from Intel.
After we dissect all the marketing terms that are now part of the glitzy side of RAM advertising, we discover that OCZ use in-house modules on a custom PCB, all sandwiched by beautiful-looking copper heat spreaders. Memory performance, in the main, is defined by module size, pure MHz speed and latencies. It's evident that low latency DDR500 is just not available right now. Both OCZ and Corsair have had to jack up the timings in order to hit the magical PC4000 barrier. Our benchmarks have highlighted the benefits of running high FSB and synchronous memory speeds. The OCZ PC-4000's massive bandwidth appears to hide some of the disadvantages inherent in a high latency design . Our pseudo 2.4 800FSB CPU, paired up with OCZ's dual channel DDR500 memory, beat out the low latency comparison in each and every memory-intensive benchmark. That's what happens when you hit a 1GHz FSB.
DDR500 memory, therefore, isn't just a gimmick. If you own a Canterwood or Springdale board, or have some mutant nForce2 board that can hit 250FSB, dual channel PC-4000 memory will help reduce the clock buffering penalties currently associated with asynchronous RAM settings. Performance arrives with a considerable cost, though. A brief look through on-line e-tailers puts the sample 1 GByte OCZ EL-DDR PC-4000 Dual Channel memory kit at comfortably over £300. That's a lot to pay, but if you're in a position to use 8GB/s of potential bandwidth, the OCZ set is currently as good as any. We'd just wish OCZ would stop calling it Enhanced Latency. There's a PC-4000 Gold series available with 2.5-4-4-7 latencies. That's closer to Enhanced Latency than this set. Recommended if you can take advantage of it. Just get ready to rob a bank to pay for it.
Bottom line - solid DDR500 memory that's just a little too expensive for our wallets.
