Athlon 64 X2: New Memory Dividers and Multitasking Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 12, 2005 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Watching Movies while you Work
For our final tests, we combined a viewing of the Batman Begins H.264 trailer with the standard Business and Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 tests. The idea behind these tests was to take a look at some of the lighter multitasking loads, combining video playback with a variety of applications.| Winstone 2004 Performance (Higher is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 | % Improvement |
| Business Winstone 2004 + H.264 Playback | 19.9 | 20.4 | 2.6% |
| Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 + H.264 Playback | 39.6 | 39.9 | ‹ 1% |
As expected, the performance boosts from lighter multitasking scenarios are next to nothing. Surprisingly enough, Business Winstone saw more of a performance boost at 2.6%, while MMCC Winstone showed us a less than 1% increase in performance.
Final Words
The outlook for using faster-than-DDR400 memory is far less bleak when you consider multitasking scenarios and the Athlon 64 X2. While not all of the scenarios that we’ve put forth showed significant performance improvements, there were more areas where we did see performance gains than not this time around.So, while our recommendation for not needing higher bandwidth DDR memory remains as is for single core Athlon 64 owners, if you happen to be a heavy multitasker, you’ll find that the Athlon 64 X2 can benefit from higher speed memory in scenarios like the ones that we’ve outlined here today.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
DDR480 is the fastest speed you can run on the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on the DFI board using the new dividers. DDR500 is possible on the Athlon 64 X2 3800+.Take care,
Anand
Diasper - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
Also, a further point might be to examine how running 4 x 512MB sticks at 2T might affect things - I guess we can say the bandiwidth loss of running it at 2T will affect performance significantly so compared to someone running DDR500 @1T with decent timings.Diasper - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
Moreover, I guess AMD's move to DDR2 does begin to make sense as when both cores are fully taxed that bandwidth will be needed.DDR2 is set to get cheaper while timings are also tightening
eg Corsair's new 512MB sticks that are rated at 3-2-2 675mhz stuff and have been o/c to around 709mhz or their 1GB sticks which are doing 3-3-3 at DDR533 (http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=4&...">http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=4&...
In short it seems that DDR2 is getting much closer performancewise to DDR but offers guaranteed bandwidth which X2 can clearly benefit from. 1GB modules that do DDR500 are few and expensive whereas while that's still true of DDR2 now, DDR2 is still being developed where we will see future refinements providing lower latencies/higher speeds at an increasingly affordable price point - DDR is no longer being developed while it is feasible that DDR and especially premium sticks might get more expensive as the market slowly shrinks.
In all, AMD have probably picked a rather opportune time to migrate to DDR2.