OCZ PC3000 and KG7 (RAID)

[pfilias]

Yesterday, I received my 256MB PC3000 OCZ memory from newegg.com (man, I love that place). I took it to a friend's house, since we were doing a Crystal Orb upgrade on his Ti500. He has the KG7, I have the KG7-RAID, so I figured while there, I'd try out the ram on his PC.

It barely worked at 133 FSB. I checked OCZ's site, and they had tested it on the KR7A and the IWill333XP board.

My question, has anyone gotten this ram to run on a KG7 or KG7-RAID? And if so, what settings did you use? OCZ had some pretty specific settings on their site on getting it to work on the KR7A. Here are those details:

Tip #1

The Abit KR7A-RAID will run the highest memory settings with 256 Megs or less of memory installed. OCZ PC3000 has been tested 100% reliable at 166 FSB at CL2.5 with auto ram timing with 3x256 DIMM.

Tip #2

To run the Abit KR7A above 166 reliably you may have to raise the DDR voltage to 2.75 volts. We have successfully run OCZ PC3000 at 187 FSB on this board though we do not recommend running your motherboard this far out of spec. The KR7A does not official support 333 MHz RAM speeds and may have issues with hard drive corruption at high front side bus speeds.

They also have these as their OPTIMAL settings:

Timing CAS Trp Tras Trcd CMD Rate FSB (MHz)

PC3000 2.5 3T 6T 3T 2T 183 Mhz

We did not try to run the ram at CL2.5 and Auto timing, we ran it at CL2, and Turbo timing. Could this have been the problem?

 

[jkersenbr]

I haven't ever tried OCZ memory, but I have a KG7. These boards seems to be a little memory picky. I've never seen ANY memory do 133 in Turbo mode at either CAS setting in mine.

Try CAS2.5 Auto. Should be good for 155FSB that way. Most KG7's start getting flaky around there anyway. Anything more is luck.

HERE is a good discussion of KG7 memory timings. It is a little helpful, but, IMHO, the 3.0v it recommends is too much to throw at DDR. I personally haven't seen any benefit from increasing voltages over 2.8v with the 2 brands I've tried in my KG7 (Crucial, TwinMOS).

 

[Rand]

I'm not surprised, OCZ RAM is well known to be less then reliable. both their RAM and ovcerclocked processors seldom seem to meet the standards they 'claim' they've been tested to.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I'm not surprised either, as OCZ ram (specifically their PC2700-3000) seems to run best with the ABIT KR7A and the Iwill XP333. And OCZ has tested it on these boards themselves. I have read of several successful accounts of users able to take the OCZ PC3000 up to 187MHz and even up to around 190MHz on the Iwill XP333.

Ram developed for such high overclocks isn't exactly built to be run in all motherboards (some cases the chipset/mobo simply can?t handle the speeds), especially those that are getting on in age such as the KG7. The Iwill XP333 was engineered to be an exceptional overclocker (as it is able to run 166 and 200 MHz fsb speeds with out compromising stability thanks to its 1/5 and 1/6 PCI dividers). The KR7A is just all around kick ass. One of the most stable and fastest KT266A motherboards out there, it also offers the highest stable overclock ability of the KT266A boards (with EPOX close behind). If you want your ram to run at high speeds, it pays off more often than not to have a motherboard and CPU able to do so (unlocking a CPU and lowering its multiplier is often required for very high fsb speeds).

It is called a motherboard for a reason. Components aren't designed to bend backwards to work with motherboards, rather, the motherboard should be the most flexible component in the system as many different and unique parts are to be plugged into it and tied together via the motherboard.

It is still possible that the module you have does not work near its specification, then again it could just be an incompatibility; we may never know what the real answer is for this particular case...

So could it be OCZ?s fault? It is my opinion that it is most likely partially their fault. The way they get their modules to run up to specifications of PC2700 and PC3000 is certainly far from impressive as they merely hand pick chips that are able run at such high speeds (nothing too impressive). However their method does work according to several users, especially those from the Iwill XP333 community. What OCZ may have done a poor job at is engineering a stick of their ram and testing it in several different setups while making proper adjustments to ensure a compatible stick of ram. It is apparent that they do not do this, and it also could explain why their memory sticks sell for far less than ram from well known companies such as Crucial and Corsair. It looks to be a good deal to me that a stick of OCZ PC2400 CAS 2 sells for a good $10-20 less than a stick of Corsair or Crucial specified to run at slower PC2100 CAS 2.5.

Some investments are a gamble and it pays for the product to have a decent warranty and purchase from a store with a policy that is very consumer friendly. If a product does not run the way it should, then it should be easy to return it provided the product?s failure was not user error.

 

[Raiz]

The OCZ does come with a lifetime warranty I believe.

 

[Wuzup101]

Yes OCZ does have a lifetime warenty...try to return it and buy yourself some kingmax PC2700 w/ the "tiny" chips. They seem to overclock very well and perform better mhz to mhz compared to regular memory using the large chips. Pluss...they look cool.

I gotta hand it to OCZ though...they have some cool looking ram...lol

kingmax will probably release PC3000 in the very near future.

 

[pfilias]

I am going to send it back and get either Corsair or KingMax PC2700. I have the KG7-RAID board. Which of those two memory brands would you chose for it? I already have Crucial PC2100, but I want to eek out more FSB.