Athlon 64 X2: New Memory Dividers and Multitasking Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 12, 2005 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Multitasking with Adobe Photoshop CS
Intel has done a great job of putting together a number of benchmarks that put real applications in real world usage scenarios. Despite the validity of most of their benchmarks, we don’t use them in our CPU comparisons because of the fact that they are scripted by Intel. But, since we’re not doing an AMD vs. Intel comparison here today, we made use of one of them in particular - their Adobe Photoshop CS benchmark.Usually, Photoshop benchmarks consist of performing every single filter on an image and recording the time taken by each filter. Intel’s benchmark performs a bunch of filters and image manipulations much like a user would, and keeps track of the total time that the script took to complete.
First off, let’s take a look at the performance of DDR400 vs. DDR480 without anything running in the background, just Photoshop CS:
| Time in Seconds (Lower is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 |
| Adobe Photoshop CS | 63.263s | 63.028s |
Although DDR480 is slightly faster than DDR400, it isn’t a tangible performance advantage (less than 1%).
But now to spice things up a bit, let’s look at Photoshop CS performance when we’re listening to a MP3 and encoding a video at the same time. For this particular test, we start up Windows Media Encoder 9 and iTunes, begin encoding our test video, then start playing our single MP3 on repeat and start the Photoshop CS script 5 seconds later.
| Time in Seconds (Lower is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 |
| Adobe Photoshop CS + MP3 + WME9 | 105.773s | 98.851s |
The end result is far more tangible this time around, with DDR480 completing the Photoshop task in 6.5% less time than the same system with DDR400.
We used our Windows Media Encoder test here because in our original article, the WME test itself saw no benefit from DDR480, much like Photoshop CS. But putting the two together and tossing in some background music changed the picture; it changed things enough that we’d actually recommend using higher bandwidth memory in this case.
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Some Body - Friday, August 26, 2005 - link
Can anyone explain why we have such a dramatic difference seen in this older article: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=222...">Rewriting the rulesAtaStrumf - Sunday, August 14, 2005 - link
I guess Dual core on S939 is the same as single core on S754, so gains/losses should be somewhat similar.MemberSince97 - Sunday, August 14, 2005 - link
Obviously samsung is going to drr2 because why ? My guess people want bigger dimms and current ddr 1x1024 dimms are not LL lol ,I am using crucial value 1gb dimms which are binned ballistics, and they work great. The thing is is they cant go any faster on currenttech.
huges84 - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
What software did you use for H.264 playback and encoding?What programs (on Windows) support H.264?
BTW, Batman Begins was the best movie I have seen in a long time!
Creepy - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
I want to know if similarly clocked processors with less cache would get more of a benefit from the greater bandwidth under the same conditions.smn198 - Monday, August 15, 2005 - link
Me too.bupkus - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
I couldn't help but chuckle when reading about different plausable multi-tasking scenarios invented to test dual core memory bandwidth. It made me think of Steve Martin's role where he must pass a Viennese sobriety test in "Man With Two Brains," which required him to do a somersault, walk on one hand, then juggle and tap dance while singing "Catalona Magdelena Lupensteina Veleneina."I think since I have several older computers sitting around un/under used that I should put my KVM to use and multi-task the old school way. A little less pressure on the land-fill as well.
PrinceGaz - Saturday, August 13, 2005 - link
I'm inclined to agree that a lot of the multitasking scenarios were quite contrived. I mean "Watching movies while you work" isn't a very practical proposition, not if you want to get any work done anyway :pAenslead - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
So... no upgrade from skt754 until M2 and DDR2, then.Great to see these things happen.
ElJefe - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
er well m2 ok, you can wait for that i guess. it will be a while before m2 comes out though. if you wait youll have to throw out your ram and gfx card, something to look forward to!