Introduction
OCZ 2GByte PC3200 Performance Series Dual Channel KitOne tenent of PC hardware that's remained intact is increasing memory usage year on year. Older PC users, and you only have to be around 30 to fit into this category, fondly recall tales of running their first PCs with 4MB of RAM. Others remember multitasking with just 16MB. Each iteration of Windows, however, has steadily increased the RAM requirement. Try running XP Professional on 64MB of system memory and see just how much work the hard drive has to do. Even a PC equipped with a generous 512MB of RAM is now stalling under pressure from modern games and semi-professional editing packages.
It's no wonder, then, that high-end consumer PCs are now shipping with 1GB of system memory, usually run in dual-channel. The premise behind increased usage is in limiting accesses (swapping) to relatively slow hard drives. With the latest iteration of processors and server-orientated accompanying chipsets, high performance PCs are beginning to closely resemble entry-level workstations. That means lots of RAM potential and storage by the bucketload.
OCZ, the company famous for its shiny heatspreaders and RAM for all occasions, has seen the line between professional and consumer PCs blur. There's little reason why single-processor Athlon 64 Model 3xxx or Intel Pentium 4 Prescott systems cannot be used professional applications such as image manipulation (Photoshop), webserving, low-end server work, and rendering. Two prerequisites are fast storage and plenty of system RAM.
That, in a roundabout sort of way, is perhaps why OCZ has decided to release a dual-channel memory kit that weighs in at a whopping 2GB. Running at PC3200 speeds and able to be used in almost any consumer board, it's the jack of all trades. Let's take a closer look.
