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Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules

 by Wesley Fink on October 1, 2004 12:45 AM EST
47 Comments | Add A Comment
47 Comments

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.

Test Results: Crucial Ballistix PC3200 Test Results: Geil PC3200 Ultra X
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  • saechaka - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    i can't seem to find a legit place to buy that ocz 3200 rev. 2. any suggestions

  • Avalon - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    Excellent article. It's good to know what different memories can do on the Athlon 64 platform.

  • ramclocker - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    14

    The psu is probably around 20A on the 12V...I know from my testing 20A doesn't cut it anymore on a high end gaming/benching rig....you also have to remember that at high speed the ram will be drawing high levels of current also and the board will draw higher current due to heat etc.

    I found the article an excellent read due to the fact it finally proved to me with reasonably tight timings running high fsb over 2-2-2 at 200 is the way to go...running 2.4gig for all tests Wes was the wise move here...great work.

  • Blappo - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    The computer would probably wouldn't use more than 250W. I understand that you don't want to mention the make and model. The nVidia 6800 Ultra draws most of its power through the 12V connection to the PSU, where the ATI 9800 Pro draws its power from the AGP slot. What is the max current rating on the 12V rail for the 465W PSU that you were using? I agree that a high quality PSU is needed (although not necessarily high max rating).

  • Wesley Fink - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    #12 - The Asus A8V is reviewed at http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128 and compared to other 939 boards. In memory testing we use a standard test bed to minimize variables.

    #11 - The 90nm Athlon 64 tests should appear next week. We have just received 90nm 3500+ and 3000+ processors. AMD did not do a media launch on these processors, so we had to find them on the open market

    #9 and #11 - A Value RAM roundup is in the works, but it has been moved out a while because of a large number of new launches this month.

  • Deuce - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    It sure would be nice with tests also conducted on the Asus A8V. I'm still deciding between the two.

  • PrinceGaz - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    Just to follow up that comment, I suppose the DDR533/2.4GHz results are actually the most useful out of them all when it comes to comparing those particular modules. All of them were fastest (at 2.4GHz) at that speed, except for the OCZ PC3200 Plat Rev.2 which was marginally faster at 8x300 for DDR600.

    Anyway, I'm looking forward to the reviews of the desktop 90nm A64 processors, and especially finding out how well each of them overclocks.

    And also the Value Memory review you promised a few weeks ago :)

  • PrinceGaz - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    Although all the (admittedly premium quality)memory could reach very high speeds, that didn't have much impact on performance.

    Taking the highest clocking brand as an example, the OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2, from the DDR400 2-2-2 speed to the DDR534 2.5-4-3 speed which was the best result still at a CPU speed of 2.4GHz, the results were

    Quake 3: 516.3 -> 525.8
    Super PI: 80 -> 79 (lower is better)
    Wolf: 110.8 -> 112.7

    So running the memory at DDR534 instead of DDR400 provided less than 2% increase in performance. This is to be expected when you compare the real-world performance of S754 and S939. The only thing that is important is that the memory can do 1T command-rate to the maximum overclock of your A64 at default multiplier.

    I think the results on the highest memory performance page are probably misleading to some readers. It shows the Crucial Ballistix coming in at 536.5fps on Q3. Looking at the results I see that was at 9x278 for a CPU speed of 2.5GHz. Your CPU was able to reach over 2.6GHz so the performance in real world tests would have been somewhat higher with a 10x multiplier. Sandra results are irrelevant to most people.

    It would be better if you included an additional test in addition to Highest Memory Speed, and Highest Memory Performance. This would be Highest CPU Speed where the CPU is maxxed out, and the memory run at whatever multiplier gives best performance on real-world tests (ignoring Sandra). I suspect the results would be a *lot* closer.

  • AtaStrumf - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    Now about some value RAM tests? These modules are just too expensive for most of us.

  • Jalf - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link

    Or maybe the "average" user would rather blow $200 on 1GB memory ;)
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