Eight months ago we reviewed our first set of OCZ memory, their gold series 2x512MB kit of PC3200. At the time, it seemed like 1GB of memory was simply more than enough for any sort of task someone would want to do on their computer. Of course even Bill Gates himself once said "You'll never need more than 4MB of RAM". As we computer users know all too well, hardware growth will simply never stop and seemingly never slow down. This of course means more hardware upgrades and more often. A common question someone looking to upgrade asks is, "Will this new hardware I'm about to purchase be able to perform on tomorrow's applications in a year or two?" In today's memory market 1GB will no longer receive a "Yes" response to that question. 2GB is the new "1GB" in memory. Even the next Windows operating system, Vista, will stress the importance of having a solid amount of memory in your computer. It was recently announced that Microsoft recommends at least 1GB of system memory to run their OS and requires that at least 512MB be installed. With this kind of serious demand for memory in the near future, 2GB of memory is no longer a "cool-guy" amount and more so a functional amount.

The benefits of having a large amount of memory are best seen when multitasking. Having many applications open at the same time (such as 7 or 8 browser windows with images and flash animations) quickly eats up system memory. Having a large reserve of memory available will help keep the system responsive as the user switches from application to application. Another area where a lot of memory is beneficial is gaming. Games are always very demanding and with a new technology called MegaTextures which loads massive textures during game play (even though the creator claims it only uses 20MB or so of system memory), system memory will become more valuable then ever.

Today we are looking at a 2GB (2x1024MB) set of OCZ's EB (Enhanced Bandwidth) PC4000 Platinum Series memory. This set is the fastest memory available in the Enhanced Bandwidth Platinum Series from OCZ and features a DDR speed of 500MHz and tight 3-3-2-8 timings so we should be able to squeeze some overclock out of them. The memory has been branded by OCZ as "Enhanced Bandwidth". This label simply means that the memory should be more stable at high speeds (500MHz) than regular or value PC4000 memory.