High-end DDR2 is an interesting market to examine, especially as prices continue to drop as clock speeds increase. While DDR2-800 is the still the default choice for most users, higher-speed DDR2 has become more popular, as both AMD and Intel support 1066 MHz (or higher) memory clocks. The continued popularity of processor overclocking has also increased demand for higher-speed memory, with DDR2-900, 1000, 1066, 1100, and 1200 speeds being offered by multiple vendors.
OCZ is one of these companies that is pushing the DDR2 envelope, producing higher-than 800 MHz speeds while it waits for the more expensive DDR3 to formally take over. The OCZ PC2-8500 Titanium 2x1GB matched pair kit offers 1066 MHz speeds, and as our set was "Intel Optimized", it also supplies excellent stability and compatibility with Intel platforms. The kit includes two PC2-8500 Titanium 1GB 240 Pin DIMM modules, with default timings of 5-5-5-15.
These operate at a default voltage of 2.1V with a maximum rating of 2.3V, and are backed by an OCZ lifetime warranty. The two modules feature a titanium-mirrored XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreader with a honeycomb design, and an OCZ sticker that denotes the model number, rated clock speed and memory timings. There are no real surprises on the design front, and our evaluation will come down to its benchmark and overclocking performance.
Our first test was configuring the OCZ PC2-8500 memory with our Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 reference motherboard, and get it up and running at 1066 MHz. This was not an issue, and with this specific configuration, we were able to maintain stable DDR2-8500 speeds at only 1.9V. We moved to 2.1V to start the overclock testing, then jacked it all the way to 2.3V to make sure we were getting everything that we could out of the OCZ memory.
Then we started moving the highly-overclockable Core 2 Duo E8500 up the scale, while maintaining the memory divisor for DDR2-1066 at the Intel FSB1333. By moving it up slowly, and then testing for stability, we managed to hit a DDR2-1242 clock speed at CL5, using a 388 MHz (1552 MHz quad) FSB. We were able to boot at higher speeds, but Windows would inevitably start acting up, and we were forced to lower it.
The Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard offers some additional memory divisors, that offer higher 1111 and 1333 MHz memory speeds. We tried the DDR2-1111 speed at CL5 and it worked seamlessly, and this has been included in our benchmark testing. The DDR2-1333 setting was not feasible at CL5, so we lowered it to CL6 and booted up. It seemed to work at first, but there were random issues that cropped up. Even so, the OCZ PC2-8500 was very close to being stable at this clock speed.
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