OCZ Micro BGA PC150 128MB SDRAM

Introduction

Memory is something you can never have enough of. Be it your brain J or your PC, the more memory you have, better it’ll perform. If you’re looking for some hard action from your system, remember that the type of memory you use will play a significant role in your systems performance. There are many users out there who buy high-end accessories to their systems but simply overlook on the memory; and they keep complaining on how badly their new system performs. There are many OEM manufactures out there who manufacture cheap quality memory for very eye-catching prices. Don’t be fooled by them. If you want stable, fast and reliable performance from your system never go for these cheap RAM. There are many reputed memory manufactures out there who produce super quality memory; namely Mushkin (Read our review), Viking, Corsair etc. Then there is Computer Zone or better known to the overclocking community as Overclocker Store (OCZ). Well actually they aren’t really memory manufactures, they simply get them manufactured by a memory manufacture known as ACTRAM®, and pastes the OCZ sticker on it.

Now OCZ is not just a memory manufacture. They produce a wide range of products, which cater to the performance seeking folk mainly. Everything from Video cards, processors, to RAM is fully overclocked to get the maximum performance. OCZ apparently do not believe in substandard performance; they thrive on achieving the best performance from everything they produce, yet keeping the price of the end product considerably cheaper to its competitors. What we have in offer to you today is a 128MB PC 150 Micro BGA memory module from them. So read on to find out how they perform.

There are a few settings you should know when it comes to getting the most out of your RAM. Go into your system bios and do the changes at appropriate in the chipset feature setup.

Things to know

The performance of your memory will have a lot to do with the type of motherboard you use. If you’re one of those overclockers who still rely on BX boards, memory frequency will only fully support 66MHz and 100 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus) speeds. The newer i815 and i815E chipsets are similar to the BX chipset, however they are capable of going beyond the 133MHz mark.

Going into the bios chipset feature setup of your board, you’re offered three settings, which determine the working memory frequency for your system. The common settings are CAS Latency, RAS to CAS delay and Pre-charge delay. To get the best performance from your system you need to set these timings to their optimum level, so lets see what all these mean.

CAS (Column Access Strobe) Latency tells the system of the DRAM system memory access cycle timings when SDRAM memory is installed in the system. The memory’s column access timings and the current system clock speed determine the ratio for this setting. Setting this to CAS 2 will give you the best performance, yet if the RAM is not rated at this setting the system might not be very stable. Higher the clock speed of your system, harder the ability to run a lower CAS rating. This actually depends on the CAS rating of your memory. If it’s rated at CAS 2 then it’s likely that you’d be able to run high frequencies without any lockups. OCZ’s 128MB Micro BGA modules are rated at CAS 2 as 150MHz.

RAS (Row Access Strobe) to CAS delay sets the delay between the CAS & RAS signals. Pre-charge delay and RAS to CAS delay should be set to a lower value for best performance. A higher number will improve stability, compromising in performance.