It is hard to believe that DDR2 has been out for over four years now, and with the introduction of DDR3 within the last six months, it would seem that DDR2 is starting to become passé.  However, with the high cost of DDR3 and the lack of available DDR3 platforms for AMD, DDR2 still has plenty of life left.

     OCZ aims to show us what capabilities DDR2 can still present to us with their new Titanium sticks, the CL3 edition.  So what makes this set of DDR2-800 special?  How does CAS 3 sound?  We will see just how these new low latency sticks perform in today's ClubOC review.

Specifications:

• 800MHz DDR2       

• 3-4-4-15 (CAS-TRCD-TRP-TRAS)       

• Available in 1GB Modules and 2GB Dual Channel Kits       

• Unbuffered       

• OCZ Lifetime Warranty       

• 2.3 Volts       

• 240 Pin DIMM

Features:

• Titanium XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) heatspreaders optimize the thermal management of memory modules by promoting greater airflow by means of micro-convection throughout what is usually the dead air space inside conventional heatspreader designs. In this manner, build-up of heat is avoided and thermal dissipation of the memory components is offloaded more efficiently through the honeycomb design. At the same time, mechanical stability is maintained.
  

• 2.4V EVP (Extended Voltage Protection) is a feature that allows performance enthusiasts to use a VDIMM of 2.4V without invalidating their OCZ Lifetime Warranty.

Installation:

     The first step is to get the new RAM installed and make sure everything is working correctly.  As usual, the installation is easy, barring the occasional hang-up regarding the motherboard correctly reading the SPD.  In this case, with everything set to Auto, the RAM booted into Windows just fine. 

     Using CPU-Z, we can see that this memory utilizes "Enhanced Performance Profiles", the NVIDIA developed standard whereas additional RAM profiles can be read by supported nForce motherboards.  NVIDIA calls memory that utilizes EPP "SLi-ready memory".  In the case of non-EPP capable motherboards, the memory reverts to the standard JEDEC method of reading the SPD. 

     In this case, the RAM booted up under the JEDEC #3 profile, running at 400MHz (DDR2-800) with 5-5-5-15 timings. In order to utilize the advertised 3-4-4-15 timings on a non-EPP motherboard, the settings will have to be set manually in BIOS.

UPDATE:  We have confirmed with OCZ that the voltage specs on their website are incorrect. OCZ will update their website to show the correct specs of 2.3V and EVP up to 2.4V.

     To test the RAM, it will be installed into the above test system.  Throughout testing, the CPU was kept at the stock speed of 2.4GHz in order keep different speeds from skewing the results.  This means that various FSB speeds, multipliers, and dividers were utilized to make this happen.  The only exception was the last batch of tests, whereas the only goal was to see how far the RAM could be pushed.