[johan851]

Present and Future is a way cool sounding way to say "I'd like to use this memory in both my current AthlonXP rig and in a future A64 (hopefully 939) rig.

I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I'm upgrading to a gig of RAM from my 2x256 Mushkin Level 2. Should I pick up 2x512mb of BH-5 (about $280) or should I get the OCZ PC3700 EB instead? For AMD systems I'm going to need something low latency, so these are about my only options. They seem to overclock about the same...I think...but the EB might have a little more headroom. Is the extra performance of the EB worth the massive price tag?

[esoteradactyl]

yes they are worth the money. the EB ram runs exceptionally well on a64 systems. i have they 3500 flavor and they do 260 with tight timings and 3.4v. go for the 3700 if you can afford them.

[glasszon]

It depends on are you willing to feed a lot of voltage into your ram when you use a64 in your rig. If you are willing to, then bh5 is a better choice, otherwise I would take the pc3700 EB over the bh5. But I hope you know there is plenty of a64 cpu died already from too high vdimm.

[johan851]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Too high of a vdimm can destroy the on-die controller, correct?

Esoteradactyl - by "tight" do you mean 2.5-2-2?

[Xenocide]

i sold my bh 5 to get 1gig 3500eb, and it was definatly worth it. my EB is doing 250fsb on 2.8v right now

[johan851]

What kind of scores do you get with the EB, and what timings is that at Xenocide?

[crimedog]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...threadid=35490
ultimate resource for investingating EB

It's really tough to choose bh5 or eb... especially with the amd64 platform with unlimited ram speed (no ceiling like on socket a, or sometimes intel). Good bh5 should do 250-260 2-2-2-5 with 3.3v. Good EB should do 270-290 3-3-2-8 (or so, i'm not sorting through 9 pages at XS) with 3.1-3.3v.

Not sure which would be better (but if you have the time and money you could test both? )

[johan851]

LoL - I have the time. Anyone want to send me the $$?

If they overclock the same I'll just go for the cheaper BH-5...

[esoteradactyl]

Originally Posted by johan851

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Too high of a vdimm can destroy the on-die controller, correct?

Esoteradactyl - by "tight" do you mean 2.5-2-2?

yeah thats with 2.5-2-2-5

f they overclock the same I'll just go for the cheaper BH-5...

your probabally not going to find any 512mb sitcks of bh-5 that do 260+. if you do get lucky enough they are going to need massive amounts of voltage. that's another nice thing about the EB, the voltage. alot of people seem to get 230 of just 2.8v. that's sweet right there.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking about. Too high of a vdimm can destroy the on-die controller, correct?

that's sort of correct. it is the high vdimm. but it seems this problem happened on the older gen nf3 150 boards. especially the shuttle an50r. the voltage spikes are what seemed to kill the cpu's. vdimm would always boot low when the box was turned on, than after a few secs the voltage would jump up to whatever you had your mod set too. you dont want that at all. going from say 2.8v to 3.5v after power is applied is bad news. ive have 2 a64 systems running over 3.4v for months with no problems.

[ap673]

I say go with the EB, but if you want to save money just go with the PC3200EB instead of PC3500EB or PC3700EB. It's only $270 for 2x512 at excaliberpc. They use the same IC's as all the EB series, so you won't see any difference between PC3200-3500-3700eb.

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2057&p=9

Check that out, as you can see, the 3500EB and 3700EB are exactly the same, 1 point difference here and there.

[unreal]

i do like ocz for there eb series,, it seems higher timing but still stable for oc'ing

[esoteradactyl]

yes they are the same chips but the 3500 and 3700 are alot better. the 3700's doing the best. they are handpicked for the highest speed with the lowest voltage. i had a set of the 3200's that were terrible. the 3700's seem to do on average 10mhz faster than the 3500.

[johan851]

I would guess though that the 3200EB's should be avoided...from my past experience (not direct experience with EB) the 3200 seems like the kind of stuff that wouldn't do quite so well...I don't know, just a feeling.

Check that out, as you can see, the 3500EB and 3700EB are exactly the same, 1 point difference here and there.

At the same speed they should come out exactly even...most memory will, won't it? It's overclocking I'm concerned about.

[SeanOMatic]

3200 EB is a fine product, it just might not have the oc capability of a 3500 or 3700 EB.

As for your last comment, at equal clock speeds and timings, EB products will all perform equally, the difference between the speed grades is the guaranteed final clock you will get out of the module.

[Gautam]

I might add that one of the strongest points of the EB for Athlon64 systems is that its single sided. Overclocking double-sided modules can be a nightmare, especially when you run two of them at a time. The EB even in the 512mb flavor is single sided, so it should just plain fly.

[johan851]

Oh, are you serious? That about seals it then...I didn't know their 512mb modules were one sided. The PC3700 flavor is about $30-40 more than the PC3500...you say that at the same timings there's about a 10mhz difference between the two?