When I received some EL DDR PC3500 from OCZ, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it, as Ben had already taken a look at a sample in his massive memory round up. Additionally, my Pentium 4 setup simply isn’t up to the task of testing this memory to its limits (not all of us here at OCP have the luxury of Vapochill PEs on hand). However, my new AMD setup consisting of an unlocked Thoroughbred B 2100+, Epox 8RDA+, and Ti4800SE proved to be the perfect combination for wringing every last mhz out of this memory. Read on to see how I beat Ben’s paltry 490 mhz and pushed past the DDR 500 barrier.
The i845PE lacks a 2:3 memory ratio, meaning I would have to hit above 185mhz fsb to hit DDR 500, which my system simply won’t do. Though the KT400 and SiS 648 have DDR 400 support (sort of), they simply aren’t strong enough overclockers, which leaves the nForce2. I started things off with the 2:3 ratio at 165mhz fsb and 2.7V to the ram making an even 500mhz at 2-6-2-2. The system proved itself stable, so I forged ahead, finally reaching instability at 168mhz fsb for DDR 508. Increasing the Vdimm to 2.8V yielded another 2mhz fsb increase, with the ram maxing out at DDR 514. No, that is not a misprint. 514 mhz, giving it a healthy 60mhz lead over the best my Corsair XMS3500 could muster. There can be only one highlander, and OCZ EL DDR is it. So what difference will going from 170\340 to 170\514 make? Let's find out.
