Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules
by Wesley Fink on October 1, 2004 12:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Test Results: G. Skill TCCD
To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and Comanche 4 had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration. We have also included results for RCW-ET using the Radar benchmark.| G. Skill TCCD - 2 x 512Mb Double-Bank | |||||||
| CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz | Memory Speed | Memory Timings & Voltage |
Quake3 fps |
Sandra UNBuffered | Sandra Standard Buffered |
Super PI 2M places (time in sec) |
Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps |
| 12x200 | 400 DDR | 2-2-2-10 2.6V 1T |
512.7 | INT 2636 FLT 2767 |
INT 6117 FLT 6046 |
81 | 110.4 |
| 11x218 | 438 DDR | 2-3-2-10 2.8V 1T |
513.4 | INT 2791 FLT 2928 |
INT 6486 FLT 6415 |
80 | 110.7 |
| 10x240 | 480 DDR | 2.5-3-3-10 2.85V 1T |
520.4 | INT 2794 FLT 3035 |
INT 6707 FLT 6609 |
80 | 111.5 |
| 9x267 | 533 DDR | 2.5-4-3-10 2.85V 1T |
525.5 | INT 3032 FLT 3226 |
INT 6956 FLT 6875 |
79 | 112.5 |
| 8x292(2.34GHz) | Highest Mem Speed 584 DDR |
3-4-4-10 2.85V 2T |
503.9 | INT 2779 FLT 2969 |
INT 6595 FLT 6514 |
81 | 108.2 |
| 9x285(2.57GHz) | HIGHEST Performance 570 DDR |
2.5-4-3-10 2.85V 1T |
557.8 | INT 3321 FLT 3429 |
INT 7408 FLT 7287 |
74 | 119.8 |
When we first tested memory based on the Samsung TCCD chips, none of the modules performed as well on the Athlon 64 as they did on the Intel test bed. At that time, TCCD topped out at a bit over 500 on Intel and about 466 on the Athlon 64. The lone exception to this was the newest OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2, which reached much higher on the Intel and to at least DDR500 on the A64 platform.
It is now clear with the G. Skill and other later TCCD memory in the roundup that the OCZ performance was not a fluke. All of the recent TCCD is now doing even better on the A64 than they do on Intel.
In the course of testing for this review, we also stumbled upon another mild surprise. We had been using a major brand 465 watt Power Supply in one of the A64 test beds with the FX53 and an nVidia 6800 Ultra video card. We were experiencing serious problems with video corruption and we were also seeing lower overclocks on memory in the 465 watt machine. We switched to the 520 watt OCZ PowerStream power supply in the problem test bed and found that video corruption disappeared and memory overclocks reached higher levels. Out of curiosity, we switched to the ATI 9800 PRO in the same test bed. We did not experience video corruption with the ATI and the 465W power supply, but memory overclocks were still lower with the 465 than what we could achieve with the PowerStream 520W.
Based on our experience, we would recommend a quality 500 watt+ power supply if you plan to seriously overclock memory on the Socket 939 platform. The difference in performance is substantial, with higher overclocks possible with the larger quality power supply. For that reason, we have updated the specifications of our A64 memory test bed to the 520W OCZ PowerStream.
The G. Skill reached DDR582 at 2T and achieved the best performance at 1T at DDR570. Both of these overclocks are substantially higher than what we could achieve on the Intel test bed with the same memory.
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Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I ordered from Newegg today. I did not see a place on their site for just a 512mb stick. I ordered the 1gb kit.http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
saechaka - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
hey bugler where are you ordering your ocz platinum rev. 2 from? is there any way to find a place where you can order 1 512mb stick only?darkwaffle - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I'm curious, for a socket754 user, is there really any reason why we couldn't (generally) follow these results? I realize that some of the overclocks may not be able to be achieved, but is it safe to say that the modules that perform highly on s939 will also perform highly also on s754 (In comparison to the other modules)?Wesley Fink - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
#32 -Corsair and Kingston DDR400 2-2-2 were both included in our recent 2-2-2 roundup. Frankly we did test both Kingston and Corsair in the early going for these tests and both did quite poorly on the Athlon 64 test bed compared to other recent TCCD modules.
However, the Kingston and Corsair were early TCCD dimms and we are confident more recent dimms from these two major manufacturers would perform more like the OCZ, Geil, and G. Skill. Unfortunately we didn't have those more recent dimms to test, and we felt reporting what we had found would have been very unfair to Corsair and Kingston, who both produce excellent memory products.
ImJacksAmygdala - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I'm sure OCZ and Geil are great memory for A64, but all I got out of that article was buy OCZ memory, buy Geil Memory, o ya and buy a top of the line OCZ power supply....What about Corsair and Kingston? How do they compete?
This site is smothered with advertisement. Why make it so obvious in the articles? Thanks for the article though...
einsig - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
And re: the robust +12v rails. They are most crucial for A64 overlocking. I have an Enermax with 31A on two +12v rails and it makes the world of difference.einsig - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
One thing that really needs to be stated is that Clawhammer cores automatically set a command rate of 2T at speeds from DDR400 and up. you need to use A64 Tweaker to make the change (can be loaded at startup). I have a Clawhammer 3400+ that has been run on an ASUS K8V Deluxe and MSI K8N Neo Platinum. I was running XMS 2x512 3200LL Corsair, but it didn't want to OC even on the K8N (nothing OCs on the K8V because of the chipset). I now run Crucial ballistix PC4000 and it is incredible, however (as the article states) the command rate of 1T is really ideal. They should just tell people how to set that if they have a Clawhammer.Shinei - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
What's really exciting is that the two DDR600 overclockers are board-limited before they top out in speed (K8N Neo2s go to 300MHz on the RAM). I'd like to see what the RAM could do on a more extreme overclocking board, since it seems like these new RAM chips are capable of pushing on to DDR667 or even higher...With that said, I agree that the prices for this stuff is getting ridonculous. Cheaper RAM means more sales and increased usage of that 8 exobyte storage capacity the Athlon 64 has. ;)
Bugler - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Thank you AnandTech. I have been waiting for greater clarification since you last recommended OCZ 3700 enhanced bandwidth ram and none could be found. I was balancing between that and ballistix. After today's review, I ordered OCZ Plat, rev 2 for the system I am putting together.Now if we could get some reviews and testing of the newer 90 speed AMD processors, hint, hint...
I appreciate this site very much.