Verdict: 1,066MHz, very overclockable DDR2 for around £110.
OCZ's answer to Corsair's Dominator is the equally ominous-sounding Reaper series, as used in Vadim's CrossFire PC, but OCZ opted to send us its new SLI-Ready Edition memory for review instead.
It isn't as good-looking as the Reaper or the Dominator, but it's quick. The OCZ kit is rated to run at 1,066MHz, PC2-8500 speeds, so out of the box, it's faster than the Corsair kit. This extra speed comes with slacker latency timings: 5-5-5-15, which isn't quite as sprightly as the Corsair's 4-4-4-12.
The PC2-8500 OCZ memory marginally outscored the PC2-6400 Corsair memory in our benchmarks. In our Paint Shop Pro test, the real-world difference of only 1.4 seconds between the Corsair and OCZ highlights how high-bandwidth memory offers very little performance benefit in everyday tasks, especially in a Core 2 Duo system.
When overclocking, we found that the OCZ was happy to run with up to 2.45V, although we had to use a 120mm fan for cooling. The results were fantastic, however; at stock 5-5-5-15 timings, we managed to ramp up the memory to 1,210MHz.
Slackening the timings further to 6-6-6-18 only allowed us to push up the speed to 1,220MHz - hardly worth it for only an extra 10MHz.
Conclusion
A 2GB kit of PC2-8500 memory with the potential to hit over 1,200MHz for only £110 is an absolute bargain. If you just want the most bandwidth for your money, then the OCZ memory deserves to be high on your shortlist.
