Page 3: Test Bench & Overclocking
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| Motherboard |
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| Memory |
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| Video Card |
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| Cooling |
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| Relevant Software |
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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. This is the same testing hardware used by Corsair, Mushkin, and several other memory manufacturers to validate kits, however even most memory companies only require a kit to pass three cycles. Then, we challenge the product to pass our entire benchmarking suite without error. If a memory kit can pass this torture test, we consider it 100% stable.
| Maximum Overclock | 3.43GHz | 3.48GHz |
| Super Pi 1.5 Mod 1M * 32M * | 11.918 10.25.794 | 11.328 10.01.957 |
| WPrime 32M * 1024M * | 7.361 224.955 | 7.016 214.656 |
| Sisoft Sandra INT FLOAT | 29.38 29.40 | 29.45 29.46 |
| Everest Ultimate Edition 5.0 Read Write Copy Latency * | 20146 16584 23894 34.3 | 21466 16785 22467 33.9 |
| Custom PC Media Benchmark Image Editing Video Editing Multi-tasking Overall | 1409 2763 1575 1916 | 1307 2798 1787 1964 |
* lower scores indicate better results
Running at 2000MHz, the OCZ Blades starts where other memory kits can only dream of reaching. We ran our complete benchmarking suite with memory at its rated specifications by raising BCLK to 143 and a muliplier of 24. Then, we raised BCLK to find the maximum frequency at stock timings and voltage.
As we've seen with other high end RAM, overclocking headroom is relatively limited compared to mainstream memory due to the fact that these kits are running at such a high frequency already. Yes, there have been 1600MHz kits reach the next speed grade of 1866MHz on our test bench, but we don't expect to see such gains from 2000MHz memory. Still operating at 1.65V, we were able to squeeze out a bit more performance from the Blades and hit 2024MHz (145x24). Also, we lowered latency at stock frequency and tightened them down to 7-7-5-20 1T. While its nice to see some headroom at 1.65V, we're sure the kit has a lot more to offer for those willing to give it more juice.