Benchmark Analysis
As we suspected, the impact on memory speed and timings on the benchmark scores differed greatly depending on how memory-centric these were. The memory bandwidth, read, subsystem, and latency tests all showed a noted performance increase at the standard DDR2-1066 and overclocked 1111 MHz speeds. Some of these were markedly higher, such as the more than 1GB/sec. jump in memory bandwidth on the Everest Memory Read benchmark.
The gaming tests didn't fare as well, but this is to be expected, as the type and speed of memory is only one small piece of the pie, with the graphics card and CPU ranking much higher. But even so, there was some performance improvement when moving to DDR2-1066 or higher memory speeds, and there was no downside to the faster DDR2.
Value
The current price of DDR2 is at historic lows, especially on the DDR2-800 end of things. You can pick up a name brand, low-latency kit of 2x1GB DDR2-800 for under $75, while going the DDR2-1066 route will entail a $10-$15 premium. If you own the right system, with a processor and platform that natively supports DDR2-1066 speeds, then it's a no-brainer. Those few dollars will get you significantly higher memory bandwidth, a higher overclocking ceiling and even slightly better gaming speed. Even for those with DDR2-800 platforms, these OCZ modules easily hit 800 MHz speeds at CL4, while providing much higher overclock speeds at CL5.
* Please note that these prices were taken at the time of review and are not meant to reflect long-term trends.
OCZ has produced some very nice DDR2-1066 memory, and their PC2-8500 Titanium 2x1GB kit offers high-end performance for those with platforms capable of 1066 MHz memory speeds. It's also very flexible, and in our testing, was easily able to hit 800 MHz speeds at CL4 timings. Overclocking was also very good, reaching almost 1.25 GHz at CL5 and coming within a hair of 1.33 GHz at CL6. The 2.1V default voltage might be a bit high for some users, but that's about the only negative we could find.
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