Closer Look at AMD Memory Performance
Now that we've shown AMD's Athlon 64 to be the CPU of choice for Half Life 2, let's have a closer look at the factors that influence Athlon 64 performance in Half Life 2.
Single Channel DDR400 vs. Dual Channel DDR400
The older Socket-754 Athlon 64s and the newer Socket-754 Sempron processors both only offer a 64-bit DDR400 memory interface, but how important is memory bandwidth to Half Life 2 performance?
In the past we've seen that the Athlon 64 platform is not very sensitive to memory bandwidth, but that will obviously vary from one application to the next. Let's see how Half Life 2 fares:
at_canals_08 |
at_coast_05 |
at_coast_12 |
at_prison_05 |
at_c17_12 |
|
| 128-bit | 116.12 |
140.43 |
123.37 |
113.69 |
83.15 |
| 64-bit | 113.44 |
130.18 |
118.32 |
110.58 |
74.63 |
Surprisingly enough, Half Life 2 is decently sensitive to memory bandwidth. While GPU limited benchmarks like at_canals_08 show a mere 3% performance improvement, at_coast_05 and at_c17_12 in particular show a 7% and 12% performance improvement, respectively.
Dual Channel DDR400 vs. Dual Channel DDR333
Given what we've seen with 64-bit vs. 128-bit memory buses and Half Life 2, we'd expect DDR333 to have a reasonably large impact on performance, so let's find out:
at_canals_08 |
at_coast_05 |
at_coast_12 |
at_prison_05 |
at_c17_12 |
|
DDR400 |
116.12 |
140.43 |
123.37 |
113.69 |
83.15 |
DDR333 |
114.67 |
134.04 |
120.23 |
113.6 |
77.91 |
The largest differential between DDR400 and DDR333 is about 7%, and obviously if we were talking about a single channel memory setup the difference would be even greater. Point? More memory bandwidth is better for Half Life 2, that will mean even higher frame rates for overclockers.
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drinkmorejava - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
When they test the Athlon 64 3400+, is it the 1meg clawhammer or the 512k newcastle. In comparisons with my friend who has a lousy newcastle with dual channel, he is always thoroughly beaten by my clawhammer.drinkmorejava - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I wish y'all would do an expo of A64's incredible "feels faster" syndrome to to it's 1/3rd mem latency of all other platforms.bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#44Where can you buy it? Especially when MSI's website makes no mention of this.
Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#43Yes that is feature feature. MSI offers it, never saw it reviewed though.
miketheidiot - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#40, 42, their was talk a while back about a PCIe to agp adaptor. Not sure what happened with it though.bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#39The MSI board has no such feature. It would require a different MCP to get AGP to work or using one of the PCI slots to do it (which wouldn't be AGP).
bob661 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#20I have some OCZ CAS3 DDR400 ram in my system. 7 months ago it was considered premium ram (it's EB3500).
Aquila76 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#39 - WTF are you talking about? nForce 4 is only PCIe. What page are you looking at? I went through MSI's site and nothing on the Neo4 page says anything about AGP. There is no AGP slot on the mobo either. If you clcik on 'Special Features' that is for the special features of all of MSI's products.Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
18 - Posted on Jan 26, 2005 at 12:35 PM by Phantronius said:"NF4 will not be supporting AGP bud, sorry, its PCI-E from here on out."
It does with a addon card..
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?Pr...
MSI K8N neo4 Platnium NF4
GO to manufactor website listed on speical features:
Special Features:
ATX Form Factor
Supports Accelerated Graphic Port (AGP) Add-On Card
AGP on a NF4 tata!
:D