Introduction

OCZ are not the most well known of memory companies on the market today, but they do produce some of the highest quality products you can get memory wise right now. Today we are posting our first OCZ review, this is based on the EL-DDR PC3500 Gold GX Memory in Dual Channel format.

OCZ PC-3500 Gold Gamer eXtreme Series is the latest addition to the extreme-speed Gold Series family. As part of the award winning OCZ Gold series, PC-3500 Gold is built with leading edge technology designed to provide users with unwavering performance features capable of excelling in even the most demanding gaming environments. With the slightly above average voltage of 2.8V, these high-speed modules run at DDR433 and turn out heart-pounding 2-2-2-5 timings with flawless performance and stability—a necessity for today’s PC gamers.

OCZ PC-3500 Gold GX products are 100% hand-tested to ensure compliance with stringent quality standards. In addition, each member of the OCZ Gold GX family is encased in a gold layered copper heatspreader for efficient heat dissipation and is backed by an industry-leading lifetime warranty, toll-free technical support and the exclusive EVP® (Extended Voltage Protection) coverage, a feature allowing performance enthusiasts to tweak their systems up to a VDIMM of 3.1V ± 5% without invalidating their OCZ Lifetime Warranty!

With its ultra-fast performance, high quality and reliability, the OCZ PC-3500 Gold GX edition is the perfect memory upgrade for memory-hungry gaming rigs.

System Setup

As always we are using our main review system for the memory tests, in addition to the machine are using the following drivers.

The Hardware

• AMD Athlon 64 4000+ Processor

• ATI X850 XT PCI Express Graphics Card

• Sapphire Axion RS480AS9-A58S Socket 939 Motherboard

• Creative Labs Audigy 2 Sound Card (OEM)

• 180 GB Western Digital Hard Drive 7200 RPM, 8mb Cache

• Sony 16x DVD-RW

• Apple 20" Cinema Display

The software we are using is as follows:

• Windows XP Service Pack 2

• ATI Catalyst Drivers 5.10

• Via Hyperion 4.51

• DirectX 9.0c

• 3D Mark 2005

• Half Life 2

• X2: The Threat

• Far Cry 1.3

• Doom 3

Benchmarks & Information

As always when it comes down to it, if you are using Athlon64 Based Processors, you are better off using low latency memory sticks. The OCZ PC3500 EL Gold Edition GX Memory both run in 2-2-2-5 timings, on default the memory runs up to 216mhz (DDR433). In this review we are going with the Dual Channel Kit from OCZ as the PC3500 EL Gold Edition GX DIMMs are supposed to be optimised for dual channel based configurations.

So what's so special about these chips? Well the OCZ PC3500 EL Gold Edition GX memory comes wrapped up in gold plated copper heatspreaders, this not only makes them heavier to hold than other memory, but it helps to insulate the DRAM from any physical damage that may come up. As you can tell, the OCZ PC3500 EL Gold Edition GX Memory flies by the other memory we tested when over clocked, and this memory is built for overclocking at higher speeds. I ran a number of tests before hand to make sure that I ran the memory at the most stable overclocked speed that I could possibly get with our board. This means we raised the voltage to 3.2V and kept the memory running at 2-2-2-5 timings. Personally I recommend running the memory at around 215MHz around 2.7V

The OCZ PC 3500 Gold GX does very well in the low latency tests that we ran and getting it to run at 500 MHz with 2-2-2-5 timings is a great achievement. Lowering the timings does not allow the OCZ memory to clock much higher.

PC Mark 05 Memory Test

3D Mark 05 CPU Test

Doom 3 Test