Test Rig & Configuration

MVKTECH once again is using its aging but still world famous DFI nF4 SLI-DR TEC test bed for this part of the review and we want to thank our sponsors for providing this test bed to allow us to conduct these reviews for the last year. Some of you know the specifications and know them by heart, for those who don’t, here is what we are using to test these modules.

Rig Specifications:

• AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester
• DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR
• 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra
• 2 x 120GB Maxtor SATA HDD
• 1 x LG 16X DVDRW Multi-format
• OCZ PC-3200 1024MB Gold GX XTC Edition
• Swiftech TEC Water Cooling Kit
• Thermaltake 480 watt TWV
• Thermaltake Armor Case

Even though this old goat is a year old it’s still got some kick left in it and we will use it as our base for testing. Having just yanked out another set of OCZ ram, we stuffed each of the OCZ PC-3200 1024MB Gold GX XTC Edition modules into our sockets and fired up the system. These 184-pin DDR-400 modules are especially responsive to the nForce 4 chipset, but will run at amazing speeds in any platform you are computing with.

Immediately the nF4 SLI-DR came to life reaching post and in deed in checking the CL the system automatically booted up at 2.5-3-3-8 under a 200MHz HTT using totally stock BIOS timings and voltages. The picture above shows the 2048MB kit stuffed in Socket DIMM 4 and DIMM 2 running in a full dual channel mode. The XTC Heatspreaders own! It's hard for a camera to grab the gloss finish and its full radiance, but these modules are beautiful and look really sweet in this system.

Here we see the OCZ PC-3200 1024MB Gold GX XTC Edition from another angle. With the garden hoses we are using for water tubing, it's hard to get a good angle on the ram, but I think you get the picture, no? Hehe, on another note, looking at this angle I am wondering about dust? How dusty will these get? Time will tell. ;-)

The super thin low profile design of each GX XTC series, is shown at this angle. Here we can clearly see the thin compact design of the heat spreader. The actual DIMM socket is wider at the base than the physical ram, so as we can see this really thin, low profile, high performance ram. Well I guess its time now to fire up the benchmark applications and move into some feedback and testing...