Introduction

Never say never again is, apart from the title of one of my favorite Bond movies (a remake from the movie Thunderball featuring the "real" James Bond one last time - Sean Connery), a sentence that anyone should keep in mind. In my last memory review I made such mistake however: I honestly believed that I'd never review another DDR2 kit again : interest in the DDR2 reviews was - and probably is - very low, certainly for the amount of work one puts in them, and DDR2 is just not very... sexy any more. However, when OCZ's Tony "Bigtoe" asked me if I was interested in something special in the DDR2 arena, I just felt an itching I couldn't resist.

So here we are...

For quite some time now, the maximum memory limit of motherboards has been advertised as being "8Gb", while some entry level boards already max out at 4Gb. Until today, almost no-one has 8Gb of memory in their systems, for a lot of possible reasons:

1. 8 Gb of memory is hard to find, from any manufacturer

2. 8 Gb of memory is very slow

3. 8Gb of memory is very expensive

4. 8 Gb of memory is not compatible with my motherboard (though it should be).

5. 8 Gb of memory is too much - I'll never need that much in my (computer's) lifetime.

Today we will all but eliminate the above reasons.

OCZ's Quad 2 Gb Platinum kits

To be honest, if it weren't for OCZ asking it themselves, I'd never have thought about testing 8Gb of memory, because of the aforementioned reasons (or at least some of them). I really had my doubts about the functioning of four 2 Gb sticks on my motherboards, especially remembering the difficulty I had when tuning and overclocking four 1 Gb modules on today's motherboards. The fact however that OCZ has absolute confidence in this product, and directs it towards the enthusiasts, makes it worth a look.

First a word about the manufacturer:

OCZ is one of the premier manufacturers of memory modules, and one of the biggest players on the international market. OCZ technology was founded in 2000 and has established quite a name for producing high end ram products, especially among the enthusiast community. Since early 2004, OCZ also produces high-end power supplies, and at the beginning of 2007, nVidia Graphic Cards were added, starting with their flag ship model, the 8800GTX. In 2007, OCZ also has put a new focus on cooling products, by introducing some eye-catching cpu-coolers. Recently OCZ acquired PC Power & Cooling, a high end PSU manufacturer, and Hypersonic, a (very) high-end system builder. Until now, memory remains the most important branch in OCZ's product catalogue, and as such we're lucky to test a memory kit today, again.

Have a look now at the modules of the day:



OCZ actually has two "quad" kits at the moment, and both are part of their platinum line-up, which means that they are directed towards the enthusiast users. The first of the quad kits is a 4 Gb kit, consisting out of four modules of 1 Gb each. The second kit is the one we're testing today, and consists out of four 2 Gb modules, making it a 8Gb kit. As always, the full name of these modules is quite a mouthful : OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 8GB Platinum Quad Kit, so let's just refer to them as "the modules" or "the kit" from now on ;-)

These are its specifications:

800MHz DDR2 (PC6400)

Latencies : 5-4-4-18-2T (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS-CR)

Operating voltage : 2.1 Volts

Overvoltage protection (EVP) : 2.2Volts

Platinum mirrored XTC heatspreaders

240pin DIMM

Parity : Unbuffered

OCZ Lifetime Warranty

Memory size : 4x 2048 Mb

As the package needs to contain four modules instead of two, it is a little different from the standard OCZ packages, or perhaps it is not. OCZ played this the smart way and took two of their standard memory blisters and combined them into one package. They wrapped them up in a new firm, paper box which has the necessary openings to show off the modules in all their glory.


Some more package shots - click to open

As always, OCZ includes a little manual, which is pictured in the thumbnail below (click to open).



Let's have a closer look now >