Super Pi
To look at pure number crunching, Super Pi 1.5 was run in all memory test configurations. Super Pi is a very simple program as it merely calculates the value of Pi to a designated number of decimal positions. In this case we chose 2 Million places.
As predicted in the unbuffered memory tests, Super Pi is fastest on the DDR2 low latency platforms, with P35 at 800 3-3-3 and 1066 4-4-3 the fastest in the overlap speeds. The P65 running the same memory is close behind. Lower Latency DDR3 now has Kingston at almost the same level in Super Pi as the P965 in overlap speeds. DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1500+ exclusively belong to DDR3.
It is interesting that the Kingston DDR3-1375 nearly closes the gap with the fastest 3-3-3 DDR2 memory available. This early introduction of lower latency DDR3 clearly demonstrates you will not have to give up a thing with DDR3 in the overlap speeds and you will gain higher speeds as well. The only current roadblock to DDR3 is the high price of admission. When that drops to near parity with DDR2 the logical choice will be DDR3.
Overclocking
The highest overclock that could be reached with stability with Kingston DDR3-1375 was 1520 at 8-8-8-22 timings at 1.8V. While we managed to boot at speeds as high as 1552, the performance was not stable enough to consistently run our test suite. While voltages as high as 1.9V worked for a while with added memory fans, it did not remain stable. The highest stable voltage that worked long term with air cooling is 1.8V.
There is more to the overclocking performance of the Kingston than just the 1520 number, however. The memory is rated at 7-7-7-timings, which is fast for a memory rated at DDR3-1375. This memory managed to reach 1500 memory speed at 7-7-7-20 timings at 1.8V. While it did reach 20MHz higher with slower 8-8-8 timings, it simply is not worth the slower timings for the small gain in speed. For best performance consider the Kingston a 7-7-7 memory to 1500 speed and ignore the higher timings
It is a significant advantage with the P35 chipset motherboards that every Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processor we tested on the P35 boards ran at 1333 speeds at the stock multiplier without the need to increase voltage. This is a significant, free, and pain-free overclock provided courtesy of the new 1333 bus speed option. This little side effect will make the P35 with DDR2 a favorite overclocker's board with current Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors. A $189 E6420 can perform even better than an E6700 just by selecting a 1333 bus on P35 and leaving everything else at default. A $500 Q6600 can outperform the QX6700 with just a bus speed change.
To look at pure number crunching, Super Pi 1.5 was run in all memory test configurations. Super Pi is a very simple program as it merely calculates the value of Pi to a designated number of decimal positions. In this case we chose 2 Million places.
| SuperPi 1.5 - 2.66GHz Results in Seconds - Lower is Better |
||||
| Memory | 800 | 1066 | 1333 | 1520 (380x7) |
| Kingston DDR3-1333 KHX11000D3LLK2 |
46.27 5-4-3-10 1.75V |
45.42 6-5-5-12 1.7V |
45.22 7-7-6-15 1.7V |
45.31 8-8-8-22 1.8V |
| Corsair DDR3-1066 CM3X1024-1066C7 |
46.89 6-6-6-15 1.5V |
45.93 7-7-7-20 1.5V |
45.77 9-9-9-25 1.5V |
- |
| DDR2 - P35 Corsair Dominator |
45.78 3-3-3-9 2.25V |
45.20 4-4-3-11 2.3V |
- | - |
| DDR2 - P965 (10x266) Corsair Dominator |
46.05 3-3-3-9 2.25V |
45.39 4-4-3-11 2.3V |
- | - |
As predicted in the unbuffered memory tests, Super Pi is fastest on the DDR2 low latency platforms, with P35 at 800 3-3-3 and 1066 4-4-3 the fastest in the overlap speeds. The P65 running the same memory is close behind. Lower Latency DDR3 now has Kingston at almost the same level in Super Pi as the P965 in overlap speeds. DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1500+ exclusively belong to DDR3.
It is interesting that the Kingston DDR3-1375 nearly closes the gap with the fastest 3-3-3 DDR2 memory available. This early introduction of lower latency DDR3 clearly demonstrates you will not have to give up a thing with DDR3 in the overlap speeds and you will gain higher speeds as well. The only current roadblock to DDR3 is the high price of admission. When that drops to near parity with DDR2 the logical choice will be DDR3.
Overclocking
| Overclocked Memory Performance | ||||
| Benchmark Applications- | 7x380 - 2.66GHz DDR3-1520 8-8-8-22 |
8x380 - 3.04GHz DDR3-1520 8-8-8-22 |
8x375 - 3.00GHz DDR3-1500 7-7-7-15 |
|
| Sandra (Buffered) Memory Bandwidth: Higher is Better |
7329 | 7462 | 7506 | |
| Sandra (UnBuffered) Memory Bandwidth: Higher is Better |
5172 | 5263 | 5390 | |
| Super Pi 1.5: Time in Seconds - Lower is Better |
45.31 | 40.40 | 40.70 | |
| Far Cry: Frames Per Second - Higher is Better |
107.46 | 117.82 | 118.60 | |
| Quake 4 - id Demo: Frames Per Second - Higher is Better |
116.0 | 123.5 | 124.2 | |
| Half Life 2 - Lost Coast: Frames Per Second - Higher is Better |
109.5 | 111.5 | 112.1 | |
The highest overclock that could be reached with stability with Kingston DDR3-1375 was 1520 at 8-8-8-22 timings at 1.8V. While we managed to boot at speeds as high as 1552, the performance was not stable enough to consistently run our test suite. While voltages as high as 1.9V worked for a while with added memory fans, it did not remain stable. The highest stable voltage that worked long term with air cooling is 1.8V.
There is more to the overclocking performance of the Kingston than just the 1520 number, however. The memory is rated at 7-7-7-timings, which is fast for a memory rated at DDR3-1375. This memory managed to reach 1500 memory speed at 7-7-7-20 timings at 1.8V. While it did reach 20MHz higher with slower 8-8-8 timings, it simply is not worth the slower timings for the small gain in speed. For best performance consider the Kingston a 7-7-7 memory to 1500 speed and ignore the higher timings
It is a significant advantage with the P35 chipset motherboards that every Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processor we tested on the P35 boards ran at 1333 speeds at the stock multiplier without the need to increase voltage. This is a significant, free, and pain-free overclock provided courtesy of the new 1333 bus speed option. This little side effect will make the P35 with DDR2 a favorite overclocker's board with current Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors. A $189 E6420 can perform even better than an E6700 just by selecting a 1333 bus on P35 and leaving everything else at default. A $500 Q6600 can outperform the QX6700 with just a bus speed change.
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Wesley Fink - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
We ran a complete test suite at DDR3-1500 7-7-7-15. Not surprisingly ALL of the results were a bit higher than those reported at 1520 9-8-8-22.As a result we will be replacing the 1520 results on all performance charts with the higher 1500 7-7-7 results. Give us about 15 minutes to complete the update. Enjoy!
photoguy99 - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
It would be a good accomplishment for Barcelona to come out and surpass Core2 performance that wowed the world last year.But how many of these can Barcelona beat:
1) Original Core2 Quad at 2.66Mhz (probably what they were aiming for)
2) Add P35 chipset for 5-10% performance increase
3) Add DD3 at 1333Mhz or higher with low latencies for 5-10% increase
4) Add Penryn core for 5-10% performance increase at same clock speed
5) Penryn releases at 3.2 Ghz, add another 10% increase
When is the pain gonna stop for AMD?
It seems by this fall the Intel platform is going to be a lot faster that the original Core2 or Core2 quad releases.
defter - Friday, May 25, 2007 - link
Since Intel has already demonstrated air-cooled 3.33GHz Penryn based quad cores, and desktop Penryn based CPUs will use 1333MHz FSB and support half multipliers, I guess that desktop Penryn based quad core CPUs can be launched at least at 3.33-3.5GHz if necessary.
TA152H - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
OK, this post really irritates me.You think AMD started design on the Barcelona last year? How else could you possibly say they were aiming for the 2.66 Core 2 before it was even released if this wasn't true? Good grief, think!
The P35 most certainly does NOT add 5-10% application performance. Maybe in specific applications you will see something like this, but overall, it's not that high.
DDR3 at 1333 isn't adding much of anything right now. 5-10%???? Where are you getting these numbers from? In fact, in every gaming benchmark they ran, it was either slower or the same as the DDR2-1066. 5-10% my ass.
Penryn numbers are also made up, it would be extremely optimistic for 5-10% increase in IPC for most applications. Maybe a few will, but broadly, it's probably not true, and absolutely speculative.
Hmmmm, going from 3.0 GHz they have out now, to 3.2 GHz is 10%? I think it's more like 6.67%.
In short, all your assumptions are either, at best speculative, or at worst, just wrong.
Will DDR3 timings go down? Of course, but so will DDR2 since that's the dominant memory. Considering the changes to the Barcelona memory controller, I think you can expect a pretty substantial improvement there, but we won't know until we see it. A lot of stuff we won't know until we see it.
The big thing that bothers me is AMD still has not fully implement memory disambiguation, and while the scheduling of loads is improved to P6 levels, I'm not sure if it's enough. I'm also not crazy about their substantial x87 implementation, as it's a deprecated technology and more and more becoming dead weight. It's not even part of x86-64.
So, I'm not saying Barcelona will be better or worse, we'll see soon enough, but the reasons you give are, at best, specious, and at worst pure nonsense.
yacoub - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
I would guess they would aim for 20-25% improvement over last year's core2duo so somewhere around 3-4 of your 5 should be the level of Barcelona performance if it works out. In that case since I don't think you won't see all 5 of those combined this year, especially at a competitive price-point I think Barcelona still has a chance. =)Anonymous Freak - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
One of my big gripes with the DDR3 reviews so far, which were the same when DDR2 first came out, is the direct comparison of same-bus-speed results. Of *COURSE* DDR3 at 800 MHz will be slower than DDR2 at 800 MHz. As this review shows, even the best DDR3 timings are slower than the best DDR2 timings.But, that's not what DDR3 is designed to do. It's designed to have higher latency in exchange for significantly higher bus speeds, as this test shows. You should be comparing the DDR3-1333 results with the DDR2-800 or 1066 results.
Just as when DDR2 came out, it had much higher latency than DDR1, but faster bus speeds. Try comparing a top of the line DDR2 rig to a top of the line DDR1 rig now. (Say AMD AM2 vs. 939.) The faster bus speed of the DDR2 rig will just blow away the DDR1 rig, regardless of how good the DDR1 timings are. The same will be true with DDR3. Faster timings will come, as will faster bus speeds. The two will cause DDR3 to completely dominate even the fastest overclocked DDR2. Just look at this review, we have fast, but *within spec* DDR3 performing the same as the ultimate in overclocked DDR2. Just wait until we have the equivalent ultra-high-end DDR3 running at a *fully within spec* 1600 Mhz with 5-3-3 timings; and we'll probably see overclocked settings even higher.
lopri - Friday, May 25, 2007 - link
I'm afraid that your assertion is not quite the reality. AM2 CPU's memory controller has never been up to the level of Socket 939 CPU's. Under the same configuration sans memory, Socket 939 rig will always win over Socket AM2 rig.takumsawsherman - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
I doubt you will actually see a significant difference between DDR and DDR2 running on otherwise similar chipsets. It wasn't very difficult to find 2-2-2-5-1 or 2-2-2-6 latencies with DDR memory. Even now, I am finding it hard to consistently source DDR2 for a reasonable price that has a reasonably low latency. But if you were to take 2-2-2-5-1 DDR and 3-4-3-9 DDR2 module pairs and run them with similar chipsets, with the same processors, you may in fact get some victories for DDR in your benchmarks.Bandwidth isn't everything. For some tasks, latency is far more important. Therefore, it is vitally important for someone to actually test real world scenarios and publish results. That way, people can save their money for an upgrade that might have a chance at improving their performance.
bobsmith1492 - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
Don't forget... latency is not just the CAS number; it is a function of the clock speed and the number of cycles of latency. The overall latency time is the important part. DDRII 800MHz at CAS3 will have better latency than DDRI 400MHz at CAS2 (if either of those exist even...)Chunga29 - Thursday, May 24, 2007 - link
Those both exist as unofficial RAM speeds, though the DDR is harder to find these days.