Final Words

Based on the tests that we’ve seen here today, AMD’s reluctance to move to higher bandwidth DDR2 offerings makes a lot more sense. The plain fact of the matter is that at the current clock speeds at which the Athlon 64 and X2 line are running, most desktop applications see virtually no benefit from higher bandwidth memory. It is possible that server usage models may show a greater performance boost, but it is highly unlikely for a mission critical server to be equipped with anything that isn’t an officially supported standard - especially memory.

While some have been critical of AMD’s unwillingness to embrace DDR2 when Intel did, it would appear that the quest for more bandwidth simply wasn’t in AMD’s best interests. These Athlon 64 and X2 cores that we have here today are far better suited for use with low latency and lower priced DDR400 than anything that offers higher bandwidth.

Down the road, as CPU speeds and the sheer number of cores goes up, then higher bandwidth memories will definitely make much more sense. But for now, for the majority of the population, these new memory dividers won’t do much for you.

The performance improvements themselves aren’t tangible, but if you are trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your system, then these new memory dividers offer you one more avenue to do so. If you have memory that can run at higher than DDR400 speeds without any reduction in latency, then by all means, explore the new dividers; just don’t expect them to change your life.

The one exception to the rule seems to be heavy multitasking scenarios. As we saw from our simple DVDShrink + Doom 3 test, when you run two very memory bandwidth dependent applications on a dual core processor at the same time, the benefits of these faster memory speeds really starts to show itself. We measured a 6.5% increase in performance in the aforementioned test, but next to no performance improvement in other lighter multitasking scenarios. As we continue to develop our multitasking benchmark suites, we will now start looking at how added memory bandwidth, made possible through these new dividers, changes the performance picture.

Single Core + New Memory Dividers
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  • sprockkets - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    i remember when ddr400 wasn't official...
  • Joepublic2 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    "Potentially as a backup plan, the Rev E chips include unofficial support for memory faster than DDR400, without overclocking the Hyper Transport bus"

    This is an appeal to overclockers, nothing more.

    "why isn't jedec officially supporting ddr500?"

    JEDEC will not approve any more speed grades of DDR without Samsung and Intel's blessing.

  • Hacp - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    Seems to be a conspiracy OCZ+DFI.
  • coomar - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    why isn't jedec officially supporting ddr500?
  • ryanv12 - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    Good article. This will probably help me sleep better at night when Socket M2 comes out and I still have an X2 939 :p
  • reactor - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    hmm kinda sad that it doesnt improve performance much, but then we already know low latecy is better for amd cpus.

    are we going to see a review on the ocz gx ram?
  • SilthDraeth - Monday, July 11, 2005 - link

    keeps getting better and better.

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