OCZ Intel Extreme Series PC3-12800 6GB Memory Kit

Overclocking Disclaimer

First and foremost, when purchasing a kit of RAM (or any component, for that matter) overclocking results are never guaranteed. Many factors can influence what a kit is capable of, including complimentary components (motherboard, processor, power supply), user experience, and simple luck of the draw. Two identical systems will not necessarily yield identical results, and anything over the rated specification should be treated as a bonus, not an expectation.

HardwareLogic has some of the most stringent memory testing on the web. When it comes to stability, we require a kit pass five cycles with the Ultra-X R.S.T PRO3 Memory Tester (The same testing hardware used by Corsair Memory and several other memory manufacturers to validate kits, however even most memory companies only require a kit to pass three cycles). We then require the test kit pass our entire benchmarking suite without error. If a memory kit can pass this torture test.....we consider it 100% stable.

To test memory kits that arrive in our lab, we run them at three different speed grades with the tightest timings possible. In this case, we tested at 1333, 1600, 1866, and a the maximum frequency overclock at CAS 9 latency. You may be wondering, what does this testing method show me? Good question. We benchmark the kit at the rated specification, which reveals the results most users are interested in and can compare to. But we also test the kit at different speed grades for readers to see how tight we were able to set the latencies. This information is relevant for those who are interested in comparing high speed, high latency to low speed, low latency results.  Of course, all kits are different but we believe this method of testing give a good assessment of the versatility and performance you can expect from this memory.    

At first, we set speed to 1333 MHz while timings were lowered at a voltage of 1.65V. This kit definitely showed promise at this point by hitting 6-5-5-13 1T. Retail 1333 MHz kits usually come in the CAS 7 to 9 range.

The next step consists of testing the memory's rated specifications. For this purpose, we utilized XMP profile #1 to achieve 1600 MHz and 8-8-8-24 1T. 

Furthermore, we left frequency at 1600 MHz to find the tightest timings possible at stock voltage. The kit remained up to the task as it showed its versatility with 7-6-6-13 1T timings.

With latency set to 8-8-8-24 1T, we wanted to find the maximum frequency we could hit. And as with the previous settings, we applied 1.65V to the memory. The kit continued its notable performance by reaching 1831 MHz. In other words, we landed at 231 MHz over the rated speed without any additional voltage.

Finally, we modified timings to 9-9-9-27 1T and set voltage at 1.7V in order to find the maximum overclock. We were thrilled to obtain a frequency of 1929 MHz, which is the highest overclock out of all the 1600 MHz kits we've tested.  

* lower scores indicate better results

As one would expect, the maximum overclock setting of 1929 MHz CAS 9 produced the best results in most of the tests. It scored the highest in 9 out of 14 tests while doing particularly well in the bandwidth benchmarks. Yes, Sandra and Everest are synthetic evaluations of performance but do a good job of demonstrating the transmission capacity of this kit. In addition, Custom PC's multi-media benchmark displayed the advantage of running the memory at a high speed, even with looser timings.