Features & Specifications
It wasn’t so long ago that running 4GB of RAM in a normal desktop computer was unheard of. Today with Windows Vista on the market 2GB of Ram is the minimum recommend amount if you want to use all the bells and whistles that Vista has to offer. If you are running resource intensive applications like video editing or photo editing programs you will want even more RAM. OCZ has stepped in and offered up this slick 4GB dual channel kit.

The OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel has latencies of 5-4-4-15 and runs at 800 MHz. the voltage requirements are 2.1V, and the memory carries OCZ’s extended voltage protection that allows you to keep the warranty when you overclock so long as the voltage to the RAM doesn’t exceed 2.2V. The heat sink is the familiar OCZ platinum XTC design that has been in use for a while.

It is important to note that you need a 64-bit Os to get the full potential from this RAM kit. A 32-bit OS can’t address 4GB of RAM so you loose the performance advantage you get from adding 4GB to your machine. I was unable to secure a 64-bit version of vista from Microsoft; the one they sent me was the 32-bit. So these numbers aren’t ideal for this kit, but will give the vast majority of Vista users out there running

Test System
To test the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel RAM I plugged it into my standard test machine with the following specs:

• CPU- Intel QX6700
• Mainboard- XFX 680i
• RAM- OCZ 4GB PC2-6400
• OS- Windows Vista Ultimate
• Display- Dell 30” UltraSharp 3007WFP-HC

Benchmarks
To test the performance of the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel memory I used Sandra XI and ran several benchmarks on the system. The first benchmark that I ran was the Memory Bandwidth test which showed that the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel had a bandwidth Int buffered of 5450MB/s and a Float buffer iSSE2 of 5459 MB/s. The next test was the memory latency benchmark which showed a latency during random access of 96 ns and a speed factor of 83.9. The final benchmark up was the cache and memory test which showed a combined index of 28754 MB/s and a speed factor of 126.8.

OCZ is a brand known for overclocking, though the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel kit isn’t particularly aimed at an overclocking crowed. However, there is a bit of overhead that you can use, though as you go up your latencies get worse so there is a small sweet spot to work with. Personally, I don’t see the hard core overclocker going for this RAM kit, so I think overclocking in this instance is a moot point. Most buyers of the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel will plug it into their machines and never think about the RAM again. This is a good thing too, you shouldn’t have to think about the RAM in your system, and it should just work and work the OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel kit does. The OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 Vista Performance Platinum Dual Channel can currently be had online from about $280.