Stability Tests

At CAS 3, the OCZ Performance Enhanced SDRAM had no problem in reaching 150MHz. But overclocking it further wasn't easy. I increased the FSB (Front Side Bus) speed in roughly 2.5MHz steps. It made it up to a maximum of 158MHz but would go no further. Even a single MHz increase in the FSB speed would render the system unbootable.

When I enabled CAS 2 in the BIOS, the Performance Enhanced SDRAM again had no problem reaching 150MHz. But overclocking it proved to be quite a task! I managed to get it up to 153MHz but it would go no more. At 155MHz, the system would boot up but Windows 98 and Windows 2000 would crash while starting up. So, 153MHz is the maximum clockspeed I could get the Performance Enhanced SDRAM to run at CAS 2.

Now, overclocking the DIMM by a puny 3MHz isn't what you will normally expect. Most SDRAM DIMMs will show much better overclockability. For example, my 128MB ACE PC133 CAS 3 SDRAM can actually run at 143MHz @ CAS 2!

But it's easy to forget that the OCZ Performance Enhanced SDRAM is already overclocked at 150MHz! Remember that OCZ is actually only using PC133 3-3-3 SDRAM from Infineon in this DIMM. So, to get it to run at PC133 3-3-3 SDRAM to run at 153MHz 2-2-2 is really quite amazing!

However, the downside is you won't be able to overclock this DIMM much. Because the DIMM is already overclocked out of the box, you can expect to go a few MHz more but no more. You shouldn't expect this DIMM to overclock as well as other DIMMs.

Now, let's get on with the benchmarks!