Verdict: Faster than it says on the tin
As everyone knows, overclockers aren't interested in anything unless it's Extreme, so it's a good job that A-Data's new Vitesta has the correct appellation. This kit is PC2-6400, so it's rated to run at 800MHz, slower than the 1GHz OCZ modules. The A-Data also has looser latency timings of 5-5-5-15.
You gain more performance in everyday apps by overclocking with the FSB at a 1:1 ratio with your memory. Accordingly, the ideal situation is to find RAM that will allow you to max out your CPU without using a memory divider.
We tried to overclock the A-Data to see if we could push it beyond the speeds of the OCZ. Although it isn't rated at PC2-8000 speeds, it had no problem exceeding them. With a voltage of 2.4V and timings of 5-5-5-15, the A-Data was happy running at 1,080MHz (a 270MHz FSB), which is slightly quicker than the OCZ.
CONCLUSION
There isn't a huge performance gap between the A-Data and the OCZ. With the OCZ memory, our AM2 Athlon 64 X2 4200+ ran at 2.93GHz, whereas with the A-Data, it clocked to 2.97GHz. However, as it's PC2-6400, it's cheaper than the OCZ.
At the moment, no-one stocks our Elite-listed Super Talent RAM, which is disappointing, because the Super Talent is the fastest DDR2 we've seen so far. Corsair's expensive SLI PC2-8500 memory is available, and is quicker than the Vitesta, so if you want the ultimate in speed, that's the best choice.
However, if you want to balance speed with value then the Vitesta offers good overclocking potential for a reasonable price.
