OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

[frag85]

OCZ3G1600LV6GK. 6 GB kit, 3x2gb rated for 1600mhz 8-8-8-24 @ 1.65 volts.

This ram was cheap when I bought it at the end of June 09. It was $85 after a $15 MIR. The only other ram that was 1600 cl8, 1300 CL6 or 7 was $20-$40 more on average at the time. This OCZ memory now retails in upwards $150+ before rebates. At the time it seemed like a great deal till I noticed a lot of i7 owners having stability issues until other memory modules were used.

The latest bios (F13 from March) seems to have solved the ram's instability for me on my Gigabyte EX58-UD4p. Since all EX58-UD** bios change logs report "Memory Compatibility", I would assume the issue could be fixed on the EX58-UD** boards.


System information can be found here:

(note: for stressing 1600 8-8-8-24 I ram the GTX275 @ stock voltage+frequencies, this was to help remove the possibility the card was on the fritz, or was stressing the PCIe chip too much)

So far at the 48 hour mark after a few tweaks over the past week. More will come after I am sure thing are good.

[frag85]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv

Reserved.

I have several pages of testing I am trying to condense.


Edit1: Ok, had a hectic week (flooding in the Northeastern states) so I haven't had a chance to organize my recent findings or do some of the stressing that I wanted but I can give a quick summery. The system has been getting through 4 days, then hard locking so I am trying around with different voltages. There were no errors during any runs in Memtest. When the system hard locks the LCD and lights on my G15 keyboard shut off, which is something that I only had happen before at high BCLKs, so I believe the stability issue now is the motherboard. I was hoping that since the system never crashes with the ram running at 1200-1260mhz 6-6-6-14 then running at 1600 with the correct timings would be a little easier.

Previously with relaxed timings (CL9 and 10) I was able to run this ram up to 1900mhz and have it pass several hours of Memtest and do some benchmarks, but over 1600mhz was never completely stable with >200mhz bclk for daily use. Hopefully I will get around to this in the next week.

With the bios settings on AUTO these are the timings that CPU Tweaker reports:

tCL – 8
tRCD - 8
tRP - 8
tRAS - 24
Command Rate - 1

tWR - 12
tRFC - 88
tRRD - 6
tREFI - 764
tFAW - 24
tRTL - 61-62-63 (RTL changes with each restart-I tried these with values ranging from 58 to 64, but decided to just leave things on AUTO)
tRTP 6
ddWTR - 7
drWrTR - 7
srWrTR - 18
ddRTWr - 8
drRTWr - 8
srRTWr - 8
ddRTR - 7
drRTR - 6
srRTR - 4
ddWrTWr - 7
drWrTWr - 7
srWrTWr - 4

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

Over month, from 2/4 to 3/30?

Sorry if you need this space as well, if you do I can delete this just let me know.

[frag85]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

Its OK LSD. I had started this thread with my previous findings running the ram overclocked, and with the apparent ram compatibility fix with F13 I was going to use this thread to catalog the progress I make with different frequencies and timings since there is not a lot of information out there on this particular ram.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

Ahh ok!

Well if you want I can delete my post up there anytime, just let me know.

[frag85]

Update 3

So i was running A LOT of tests the past week trying to get the ram completely 100% 24/7 stable with 200x21 for 4.2ghz with the ram running its rated 1600mhz 8-8-8-14 and i found out that i needed a lot more qpi than I thought. I grew some balls and plugged it up to 1.5v qpi, previously the max QPI voltage I was willing to try was 1.44v. I was still getting a few lockups, but with all other settings exhausted I increasing the Vcore from 1.28v (1.26 under load) to 1.325(1.31 load) and I was finally completely stable. The wierd thing is I won't get any BSOD's for Vcore untill its lowered to something like 1.22v or 1.24v at 4.2ghz. This caught me off guard because with the ram running slower it will Prime95/Fold/Game all day @4.4ghz at 1.31 vcore. At this point I was just about to throw in the towel and just look into ordering another CPU and/or ram since the IMC did not seem to like this ram much.

At 1.5v QPI I have run a few days of Prime95 Small and Large FFT w/ Folding@Home GPU running. I did some gaming with P95 set to low with no issues. On the other hand, with the ram running up to ~1300mhz 6-6-6-14 with1.3v qpi and 1.28vcore., and performance is usualy <5% slower@1200mhz in the benchmarks I run. The only gains were in rendering/compression and some games, but that is about what I was expecting with 33% faster clock speeds but 33% slower timings. The only real-world performance gain I see is a frame rate boost in games (10-15% higher@1600mhz) which can make it or break it when you are talking about maxing out(or close to it) ArmA 2, Metro2033 or Crysis(MWLL mod). Coupled with the voltmod on my GTX275 I see a 25-30% increase frame rates vs. 1200mhz ram and the 275 OC'd on its stock voltage.

Using Memtest86+v4.0 tests 2+5 running for 6 hours each the ram was stable to 1750mhz 8-8-8-24, and did 1776mhz same timings with 1.68v DRAM running a 222 bclk. I also did 12 hours of all tests at 1750mhz, so I THINK the ram is stable, and that the whole time it really was my QPI.


I think 1.5v is way too much for daily use on air cooling, what do you think?

Running the Folding@home cpu client Tcase runs 55-60c, cores run in the high 60's-low 70's. I have seen LSDMeasaps posts (they were either here or at XS) with links to a couple Ram manufacturers in-house testing procedures (IIRC one was Corsair) and they use 1.5-1.6v QPI/VTT, but this still seems very excessive to me. I want the mobo/ram/CPU to last 4 years or so since I usually do upgrades every other generation and from what I ahve seen 1.5v is pretty high up there. Just as a comparison my last system was a P4 2.4c @3.6 that ran for 6 years like that, and benched at 3.8ghz. To me this only proves that if its stable and within spec it will last, and 1.5v seems way out of spec.

				1200	1600	
				6-6-6-14	8-8-8-24	
Arithmetic (GOPS)		78	78	0%		
						
Mutli-Media (Mpixels)		162.83	163.96	1%		
						
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)		21.06	27.39	30%		
Video Render (Mpixels/s)	241.76	290.46	20%			
Performance Index		902	1031	14%		
						
Wprime 32m			8.517	7.795	-8%	
Wprime 1024m			252.627	239.593	-5%	
						
Cinebench 64 OGL (fps)		47	53.14	13%		
CineBench 64 CPU (pts)		5.45	5.74	5%		
						
CineBench 32 OGL		48.83	54.35	11%		
CineBench 32 CPU		5.03	5.28	5%		
						
CineBench10 32 1CPU		4741	4877	3%		
CineBench10 32 xCPU		16113	16790	4%		
Increase(multi)			3.4	3.44	1%	
CineBench 32 OGL		7860	7952	1%		
						
CineBench10 64 1cpu		5950	6135	3%		
				3.49	3.53	1%
CineBench10 64 xcpu		20760	21662	4%		
Cinebench10 64 OGL		8030	8185	2%		
						
EVEREST						
Memory READ			14340	17453	22%	
Memory Write			11039	14462	31%	
Memory Copy			15780	21401	36%	
Memory Latency			53	47.2	-11%	
L1 Read				67183	67184	0%
L1 Write			67161	67154	0%	
L1 Copy				134250	134253	0%
L1 Latency			0.9	0.9	0%	
L2 Read				44746	44717	0%
L2 Write			40338	40651	1%	
L2 Copy				51913	51841	0%
L2 Latency			2.4	2.4	0%	
L3 Read				30476	31953	5%
L3 Write			17201	22169	29%	
L3 Copy				28703	32029	12%
L3 Latnecy			3.6	3.3	-8%

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

I am not sure about air cooling, if it matters or not, if temps are good they are good no matter the cooling source really. Agree?

See my thoughts on QPI/Vtt here, you will also find links to several kits that are stock rated XMP at 1.6-1.7 QPI/Vtt. Not that I am suggesting that, just posted my thoughts and findings a while back is all)
QPI/Vtt Voltage post (High is OK)

This is likely the post you mentioned ^^

Will 4 years at 1.5V QPI/Vtt kill or degrade anything? Only you will be able to say, in 4-5 years from now, I think it may be ok though as I have been using 1.42-1.44 for the past year or so without any issues. And I have used 1.6+ benching, and later used that same CPU back at previous settings and did not run into any issues

Check this out, very interesting findings/thoughts
MADSHRIMPS - Hardware Reviews ,Crazy Projects, Modding Tutorials and Overclocking

Taken from this XS thread, where they are testing Vtt/Vdimm right now in excess
VTT / VDIMM etc... Mythbust attempt - XtremeSystems Forums

[frag85]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

Thanks LSD, that is what I was looking for.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

Hope it helps ya some!

[mrcool63]

Re: OCZ3g1600lv - what can this ram do?

dude even though urs works like a charm OCZ is notorious for bad pieces of ram. Even high enders are not spared.. Absolutely no quality control. check out newegg and u will see!!! I would prefer crucial or gskill for that matter and they are cheaper!! So good luck dude and hope ocz bodes well for u