Athlon 64 Revision E: Unofficial DDR500 Support
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 11, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
The Test
As we’ve already mentioned, we used the DFI LANParty UT nForce4 Ultra-D motherboard, with the 704 BIOS installed to enable support for the new memory dividers.Our memory of choice was the OCZ PC3500 Gold Edition GX, which can run at up to DDR500 at 2-2-2-5 timings at 3.3V. The beauty of this memory is that we can run at the same memory timings from DDR400 all the way up to DDR500, which is exactly what we wanted for this review.
We picked the X2 4800+ to see if the fastest dual core CPU can use the extra memory bandwidth. We chose the X2 4200+ to see if a reduction in L2 cache made the extra memory bandwidth more useful. And finally, we used the FX-57 to see if the highest stock clocked Athlon 64 processor could put the extra memory bandwidth to use.
Our usual CPU test suite was reduced significantly in order to weed out applications that would definitely not show any performance improvement. If you don’t see a particular test here that we’ve used in the past, it’s most likely because it showed an even smaller improvement than what we’ve seen here. This wasn’t done to make the new memory dividers look better, but rather to make the testing more manageable; once you see the results, you’ll understand why just focusing on this small sample is more than enough to get a good idea of how the performance will be impacted as a whole.
We used the latest nForce 6.53 and ForceWare 77.72 drivers for our test bed, and paired it with the newly released GeForce 7800 GTX.
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wien - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#15: It's not like they will stop making s939 CPUs the instant they launch M2. You'll be fine for a couple of years for sure.PrinceGaz - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#13- Lots of mobos support 3.3V RAM voltage. Only problem is they take PC66/100/133 modules rather tahn DDR :)AnnihilatorX - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Well in the end AMD still planned to move to DDR2To me they said S939 would last long
But they are moving to socket M2 and DDR2 next year
It would have been much better if they stick to s939 and wait for DDR3 instead
#12 I think it's next year
Viditor - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
"According to [H] it is the San Diego core which has the improved (fixed) memory controller (see quote below). So do you have to be careful to get San Diego or is Venice ok?"San Diego, Venice, DC Opterons, and the X2 all have the improved memory controllers...
elecrzy - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
#11: how many mobo's do you know support 3.3V+ RAM voltage and how many RAM sticks to you know support DDR500 with 2225 timing?bupkus - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
When does AMD's roadmap start using DDR2?JustAnAverageGuy - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
A64s aren't bandwidth starved. We knew that much already :)When you crank up the HT\FSB speeds you're normalyl trying to get the CPU clock speed up. Dividers just help if the memory can't keep up. :)
What's with all the OCZ+DFI love going on around here anyway? :)
GTMan - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
According to [H] it is the San Diego core which has the improved (fixed) memory controller (see quote below). So do you have to be careful to get San Diego or is Venice ok?"The San Diego core brings with it some very important things. Primarily, it has what AMD terms as a “more flexible memory controller.” We at HardOCP would prefer to call it a “fixed memory controller.” “Fixed” as in the older one was broken."
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Nzg3
creathir - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
Well, I for one am just GLAD Anand is not dead... was begining to wonder... Maybe you got invited up to Redmond for a little chat due to you article that got pulled? At least you're alive and the M$ob did not get ya...Great work on the article. I suppose as long as I do not play BF2 on one screen while rendering a scene in 3DStudioMax on another, I should be fine.
- Creathir
Joepublic2 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link
"i remember when ddr400 wasn't official..."I do too, DDR333 was intended to be the last speed grade of DDR. Samsung and other memory makers had good yields of DDR400, and were having big problems with DDR2. Those have been fixed, and DDR2 is ready to go, having recently become even less expensive that DDR.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/200507...