Archives
Contact
Contests
Downloads
Forum
History
Links
Reviews
Home

Best viewed with
Internet Explorer v7.0
@ 1024x768 or larger.
Copyright © 1997 - 2007
by Club Overclocker
All rights reserved
Legal Stuff

 

   

Application:

PC2-8500 DDR2 (2 x 1GB)

Provided by:

OCZ Technology

Available at:

NewEgg

MSRP:

Approximately $246

Availability:

Now

Review by:

Scott

Edited by:

Paul

Review date:

May 3rd, 2006

 

Crucial System Scanner
 

 

Overclocking Tests

     Now comes my favorite part, OVERCLOCKING! Call the Fire Department because things are about to heat up...

1200MHz Memory Only

     On this overclock test we overclock the memory at 1200MHz only while leaving the CPU at 1066MHz. We should see a nice performance increase in our memory benchmark if the Reaper will hold stable.

Motherboard Settings

SLI/EPP Memory Setting: Disabled
CPU/Memory Link: Unlinked
Memory Bus Speed: 1200MHz
Memory Voltage: 2.3v
Memory Timings: 5-5-5-15 (default)
CPU Bus Speed: 1066MHz (default)
Final CPU Clock Speed: 2.66GHz (default)


Sandra scores are shown in red: 7592/7587.

     I was able to hit 1200MHz without a problem and I didn't even have to increase the voltage. Very nice...

1200MHz CPU & Memory

     Next let's try overclocking the CPU and memory at 1200MHz. This gives us a final CPU clock speed of 3GHz and should give us an overall performance increase.

Motherboard Settings

SLI/EPP Memory Setting: Disabled
CPU/Memory Link: Unlinked
Memory Bus Speed: 1200MHz
Memory Voltage: 2.3v
Memory Timings: 5-5-5-15 (default)
CPU Bus Speed: 1200MHz
Final CPU Clock Speed: 3GHz


Sandra scores are shown in red: 8508/8506.

     This time we see a huge increase in memory performance due to a faster CPU clock speed. Can the Reaper keep it up? Let's try 1300MHz next...

1300MHz or more???

     1300MHz at default voltage was a go, unfortunately the memory would not run stable through the benchmarks. I increased the memory voltage to 2.4v and tried again. This time success!


Sandra scores are shown in red: 9108/9108.

     9108!!!!!! Impressive... Next I tried reaching for 1350, 1400, and 1450MHz. I was able to boot into Windows at 1400MHz, but the system was just too unstable over 1300MHz to recommend to our readers. Regardless, 1300MHz out of 1066MHz memory is very impressive.

     To recap we have a chart showing the memory benchmark scores at 800/1066, 1066/1066/ 1200/1066/ 1200/1200, and 1300/1300MHz.

Conclusion

     OCZ has another big winner on their hands. The Reaper HPC is some of the best overclocking memory I've seen in a while. While the loose timings of 5-5-5-15 are not all that impressive, the benchmark scores are. I'll admit that at first I was a little skeptical about adding heat pipe technology to memory. Experience tells me that heatspreaders or special cooling make very little difference, however in this case it makes just enough difference so that I was able to push the 680i motherboard just a little bit further than previous PC2-8500. Regardless, the Reaper HPC memory looks awesome and priced right. ClubOC Recommended!

Innovation:

10 out of 10

Performance:

9.5 out of 10

Quality:

10 out of 10

Stability:

10 out of 10

Overclocking:

10 out of 10

Software/Drivers Pack:

N/A

Value:

9.5 out of 10

Overall Rating 9.5

   

Project Skill Level
(10 being most difficult)

4 out of 10

 

 


AMD
Cooler Master
Sapphire Tech
Futuremark Corp
Kingwin
Patriot Memory
Seagate