OCZ 6GB PC3-12800 Platinum DDR3 Triple Channel Memory Kit Review

System Benchmarks

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system.


We have always been quite fond of this application because it provides excellent insight as how to the processing and memory sub-systems are performing, and it is also perfect for demonstrating the slightest performance variances. With the processor locked to 3.2Ghz, and the memory set to 1600Mhz, we can clearly isolate how SuperPI scales responds to different memory timings. The 7-7-7 does boast a healthy 5 second improvement over 9-9-9, but that is a less than 1% difference. On the other hand, the DDR3-1922 result demonstrates that SPi is quite fond of increased memory bandwidth, as seen by the significant 18 second gap between DDR3-1600 CL7 and DDR3-1922 CL9. Clearly, memory bandwidth plays a huge factor in SuperPI 32M, with tight timings coming in a distant second.


The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general overview of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which consists of a wide range of tests involving all the sub-systems of the computer.


Much to our surprise, the Memory Suite suggested that performance gap between the slowest and fastest results was a mere 1%, and this despite the 20% frequency difference between the stock and overclocked scores. Strangely, the PCMark Vantage Memory Suite is quite CPU dependent, and since our Core i7 965 was clocked at 3.20-3.28Ghz for all four memory configurations, this hypothesis would explain the seemingly identical scores. Timings clearly do not play a noteworthy role.


Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.


Cinebench is an exceptional CPU benchmark, and the Intel Core i7 blows past all previous platforms in this test, but clearly memory timings do not have a noteworthy impact. The DDR3-1922 result is a bit higher than the others, but that could be attributed to its higher Uncore/IMC frequency.


Unlike many audio conversion programs, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single processor thread. This will obviously limit performance but we should still achieve significant time savings going from the stock to the overclocked settings. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.


A second here, a second there, LFE does not appear to gain much of a performance boost from the increased bandwidth nor lower latencies. We can't really complain though, since we are able to rip and convert an entire CD album to high-quality MP3s in under 2 minutes 40 seconds.



For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS3 in coordination with our very own HWC Speed Test, which is an excellent measure of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 12 different actions and filters to a 3.72MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 12 results to reach a final figure.


Photoshop does appear to benefit from both tighter timings and lower latencies. There is a 2% performance improvement between the DDR3-1600 CL7 and CL9 results, and a slightly more respectable 5% improvement between DDR3-1600 CL9 and DDR3-1922 CL9 results, which would suggest that Photoshop performance does somewhat scale with increased memory bandwidth.



The last of our real-life tests will be with the highly popular & multi-threaded WinRAR 3.80 tool, in which we take a 1GB batch of assorted files and archive them, timing the task until completion.


Although WinRAR compression is a heavily memory bandwidth bound workload, the Core i7 processor's triple memory interface provices so much memory bandwidth that the difference between the slowest and fastest results is a minor 3%, with memory latencies not having a particularly appreciable difference on compression performance.