OCZ 3700EB: Making Hay with Athlon 64

Conclusion

OCZ is breaking new ground with their latest Enhanced Bandwidth series, and 3700EB extends the EB performance envelope. While rated at DDR466, we were able to reach a stable DDR524 on our Intel test bed and an even more remarkable DDR550 on our AMD nForce3-250 test platform. We purposely did not push 3700EB beyond the voltage limits of the test motherboards, which were 2.85V to 2.9V because this is what you can buy in the marketplace. But, we did some experimentation with 3700EB and found that it responds very well to even higher voltage. With motherboards that have been modified to supply 3.0V to 3.2V, DDR500 timings of 2.5-2-2 are very possible. If you decide to try this, please watch out for overheating. 3700EB can handle higher voltages but it gets very hot with increased voltage and you need to supply additional cooling for the memory.

Performance curves for 3700EB on the Intel testbed were similar to those we saw with 3500EB, it is just that 3700EB reaches a higher speed at the top. It is worth noting that 3700EB performed very well at stock voltage all the way to DDR466, which is an improvement compared to 3500EB. As we found with 3500EB, the memory is not as fast as some current CAS 2 memory at DDR400, but its performance is very close to the best, even though EB is rated at CAS 2.5. However, in the DDR433 to DDR466 range, 3700EB performed neck-and-neck with the best memory that we have tested, even though the CAS latency was slower. By DDR500, OCZ 3700EB reached the highest bandwidth that we have yet seen at DDR500, the same as 3500EB, even though it ran at CAS 3 and the other fast memories were at CAS 2.5. At the highest Intel speed of DDR524, EB is performing about the same as memory tested at DDR560. This is a solid confirmation of the Enhanced Bandwidth that OCZ claims to deliver with EB. It certainly looks like the more you overclock EB, the greater the impact of the EB optimizations.

Now that high speed memory is no longer a waste on AMD Athlon 64 platforms, we were amazed at how well OCZ 3700EB performs on a Chaintech VNF-250 motherboard with the nVidia nForce3-250 chipset. 3700EB reached an even higher DDR550 on the Athlon 64, and delivered some of the best memory performance that we have ever seen in our gaming and calculation benchmarks. Future memory benchmarks will include both Athlon 64 and Intel motherboards, now that either platform can be used to test memory performance effectively. The AMD platform now offers some additional advantages with both AGP/PCI lock and adjustable ratios, and we are looking forward to seeing how other new DDR memory performs on the new AMD chipsets.

3700EB is an outstanding performer over a very wide range on both the Intel and AMD platforms. It certainly belongs on your short list if you are looking for Intel DDR memory. Frankly, for Athlon 64, we would be hard-pressed to choose any other memory over 3700EB or 3500EB for the nForce3-250/K8T800 PRO or other boards that support working PCI/AGP locks on Athlon 64. 3700EB is simply astounding on Athlon 64.

When Dual-Channel arrives with Socket 939 next month, we should see a 2% to 5% increase in these already outstanding performance results. We will then see if OCZ 3700EB is the same brilliant performer in Athlon 64 Dual-Channel that we have seen on the Single-Channel Socket 754.