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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Phantronius - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#3NF4 will not be supporting AGP bud, sorry, its PCI-E from here on out.
Ozz1113 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Ill backup the thought of putting some T-bred cores in there. My OC'd XP2600 333 w\ modded 9500 radeon system ran HL2 very well. I would have liked it to have been better, but it is not worth upgrading yet.Araemo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Hehehe.. I'll fifteenth the "Please include an AXP3200+" sentiment. Personally, I'd rather see one or two AXPs included than a complete list of athlon64s.. You can generally extrapolate the performance of a given CPU if you are given two other CPUs with the same cache/FSB/core. I know that my Mobile barton handled the game fine, but I'd like to know how far behind a cheap A64 it really is.miketheidiot - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
"Our standard 2-2-2-10 memory does actually offer reasonable performance benefits in Half Life 2 compared to DDR400 with higher timings such as 3-3-3-10 or the unrealistically high 3-6-6-10."Reasonable performance benefits? decent 2.5-3-3-10 ram can be found cheap nowdays (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?desc... and compared to the oczrev2 and other $200+ modules is at least $60 cheaper, in some case as much as $100 cheaper. The 2-2-2 is only 2% faster than the 3-3-3, so does that extra $60+ really offer "reasonable performance benefits"?
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#13... I wouldn't call that an error, I'd call that a difference in opinion. :)PrinceGaz - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
There seems to be an error on page 4- "Almost all DDR400 these days is CAS 2 memory, but older memory may have a higher CAS latency..."Shouldn't it say "Almost all DDR400 tested by AnandTech is premium CAS 2 memory, but CAS 2.5 and CAS 3 are more common..."
Aquila76 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
What about SLI configs? I think people looking SLI for an option may want a better idea how their CPU choice affects the dual GPU choice. Can you add SLI'd 6600GT, 6800GT, 6800 Ultra benches to the tables at the end of your article?Tiamat - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Yeah, although probably unrealistic, tossing AXP's into a "low end range" comparison along side would help some people. Overall, great article!Regs - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I liked the Ram latency and 64-bit/128-bit test. But I'm wondering how would 2.5 Cas would perform? Makes sense to list it since a lot of value named brand ram modules come with 2.5 CAS. I would think it would perform in-between the two, but I'm having the slightest inkling that 2.5 CAS and 2.0 CAS will perform the same.Can't wait to hear about multithreaded games for dual core CPUs.
Jeff7181 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Well we can look at the other HL2 articles cause there's an XP3200 in those... but... this being a CPU oriented article I thought it would be nice to have that CPU included. Possibly even an XP3000 so we can get an idea for how it scales so I can estimate how my 2.48 GHz Mobile AXP compares.