Memory Scaling on Core i7 - Is DDR3-1066 Really the Best Choice?
by Gary Key on June 24, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Everest 5.02.1765
Our favorite PC diagnostic tool is from Lavalys. We are using Everest Ultimate Edition 5.02 for our synthetic memory benchmarks.
Memory companies love to see these benchmarks in reviews. Of course we enjoy them also as they do give an indication of potential performance improvements in applications, especially the write, copy, and latency results. However, we always temper our expectations with these particular results. Going from 1066 C7 to 1866 C7 nets a 45% improvement in memory reads, 47% in writes, 41% in copy speeds, and 30% in latency. Just remember these results once we get to the application benchmarks.
PCMark Vantage x64
Futuremark's PCMark Vantage x64 is probably the single most diverse set of benchmarks that can be run on a system to mimic real world usage scenarios. We utilized the three test suites out of PCMark Vantage x64 that typically respond well to either memory latency (Memories/Productivity) or bandwidth (TV/Movies) improvement. We run each test three times and average the results.
Well that's depressing, there's hardly any performance improvement.
The Memories test suite follows a familiar pattern, as it tends to be sensitive to latency adjustments. We can already see that performance with DDR3-1066 C5 is equal to DDR3-1600 C8. There is a 2% performance improvement moving from 1066 C7 to 1866 C7.
Surprisingly, the TV/Movies test suite responded well to both latency and bandwidth improvements with DDR3-1066 C5 and DDR3-1333 C6 outperforming the other memory speeds until we installed theDDR3-1600 C7 kit. Going from 1066 C7 to 1866 C7 will net almost a 4% improvement in performance, but is something most users will never notice in these applications.
The Productivity test suite has always been sensitive to latency and it shows as we once again see DDR3-1066 C5, DDR3-1333 C6, and DDR3-1600 C6 performing very well in this office application bench. We net a performance increase just over 3% by moving from 1066 C7 to 1866 C7 at stock CPU settings.
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darklight0tr - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
You kinda lost me at the Windows 7 admission. Why use an unreleased OS that most of us don't have access to?Gary Key - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
I debated about using Win7, but we have some interesting virtualization benches coming in a couple of weeks with XP mode running on it, both for these tests and looking at 12GB and 24GB loads.Also, memory management and several other performance metrics are just better under Win7 than Vista. I ran most of these tests under Vista 64 and the results (percentage wise) were the same as Win7. I also tried the latest RC version of Win7 (7232), no differences in performance. Not that I expected any as the core code for Win7 has been done for a while but it was to double check. I did not use 7232 since it is not "officially" available for the public. ;)
crimson117 - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/downloa...">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/downloa...There, now everyone here has access to it.
darklight0tr - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
LOL. You got me there, my brain hadn't arrived at work yet when I posted that comment.Still, I don't see the point of replacing the released, established OS with an unreleased one. Testing on both would have made more sense if you wanted to do it that way.
philosofa - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
I lol'd :) Nicely done.Re the article itself; fantastic and thorough work as always! Great to see the debate and various titbits of benching replaced by such a systematic multi-app examination of i7 memory speed & latency effects. Also, cheers for the analysis of min frame rates - this is something that's been on-and-off for a while now, and I, like a lot of others, agree that it's as least as important as average FPS.
Cheers Gary.
Matt Campbell - Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - link
Great job as always Gary, fantastic detail.aileen - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
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