OCZ 3700 Gold Rev. 3: DDR500 Value for Athlon 64 & Intel 478

Several weeks ago, OCZ introduced a new PC4000 Gold Rev. 2. The new revision was very interesting, since it carried the high performance Gold name, but was priced about 25% lower than other OCZ DDR500 memory. It was our plan to review the DDR500 to see how it compared.

As we completed testing of OCZ 4000 Gold Rev. 2, we were told by OCZ that yields were so good with the new Hynix memory chips, they had decided to use the same memory chips in their new 3700 Gold Rev. 3. This means that the current 3700 Gold Rev. 3 and the 4000 Gold Rev. 2 are the exact same DIMMs for the time being. This could always change in the future, if yields do not maintain the same high levels that OCZ is currently seeing, but for now, you can buy 3700 Gold Rev. 3 and be assured that you are receiving memory which has been binned for DDR500 performance. This certainly makes the 3700 Gold Rev. 3 a particularly good buy right now.

While the price of the OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 3/PC4000 Gold Rev. 2 appears a good value, the proof of value is in how the 3700/4000 performs compares to similarly rated memory. We have run the new Rev. 3 through our full benchmark suite on the standard Intel 875 memory test bed. We also ran the first complete series of memory tests on a new Athlon 64 memory test bed. So, how does the OCZ 700 Gold Rev. 3 compare?