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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Avalon - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Yep, I felt there should have been an Athlon XP in there, since many users are still running XPs, and many enthusiasts are running overclocked mobile bartons. I just assumed that an XP 3200+ would be equivalent to the 2.8ghz P4 they benched, and went from there.arfan - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
I think Half Life 2 is more friendly than DOOM3. We can play HL2 with old video card (entry level video card). But to play DOO3 we need mid range video card :(blckgrffn - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Agreed, there are a lot of us that are still running our XPs. Hard to beat the bang for the buck on that platform, but just how much are we missing out?Jeff7181 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Awesome article. Only thing I would have liked to see is an Athlon XP3200 (as outdated as it is) in the mix as well just to see where it would fall on the charts.acejj26 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Good to see Anand writing articles again. I get tired of seeing grammatical and spelling errors in articles written by some of the other guys here. Anand's articles are always well thought and just seem more professional. Good job. I also appreciated the Mac Mini article yesterday. Keep it up.Dranzerk - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Good article, came out in the right time I was considering upgrading my ATI 9700 Pro/2.4ghz P4 to a athlon 64 or a 6600GT. Guess its the Nvidia 6600GT :DThe only thing holding me back (others to) is the AGP vs PCIx deal, but with NF4 chipset with AGP it should be a no brainer now to just stick with old AGP card and have lot of life in it for time to come.
George Powell - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Awesome article. Made for a really good morning read.morcegovermelho - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
There is an error on page 2. The value for athlon 3500+ at_coast_12 is 11.58.
Great article