Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules
by Wesley Fink on October 1, 2004 12:45 AM EST- Posted in
- Memory
Test Results: OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 3
To be considered stable for test purposes, Quake3 benchmark, UT2003 Demo, Super PI, Aquamark 3, and RTCW had to complete without incident. Any of these, and in particular Super PI and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, will crash a less-than stable memory configuration.| OCZ 3700 Gold Rev 3 (DDR466) - 2 x 512Mb Double-Bank | |||||||
| CPU Ratio at 2.4GHz | Memory Speed | Memory Timings & Voltage |
Quake3 fps |
Sandra UNBuffered | Sandra Standard Buffered |
Super PI 2M places (time in sec) |
Wolfenstein - Radar - Enemy Territory fps |
| 12x200 | 400 DDR | 2-3-3-10 2.5V 1T |
503.3 | INT 2577 FLT 2673 |
INT 6063 FLT 6014 |
82 | 109.0 |
| 11x218 | 438 DDR | 2-3-3-10 2.8V 1T |
510.0 | INT 2687 FLT 2845 |
INT 6413 FLT 6350 |
81 | 109.8 |
| 10x240 | 480 DDR | 2.5-3-3-10 2.6V 1T |
517.6 | INT 2814 FLT 2985 |
INT 6659 FLT 6551 |
80 | 111.2 |
| 9x267 | 533 DDR | 3-3-3-10 2.7V 1T |
524.9 | INT 3013 FLT 3234 |
INT 6959 FLT 6871 |
79 | 112.5 |
| 9x273(2.46GHz) | Highest Mem Speed 546 DDR |
3-3-3-10 2.85V 1T |
536.2 | INT 3071 FLT 3298 |
INT 7110 FLT 7002 |
77 | 115.1 |
| 9x273(2.46GHz) | HIGHEST Performance 546 DDR |
3-3-3-10 2.85V 1T |
536.2 | INT 3071 FLT 3298 |
INT 7110 FLT 7002 |
77 | 115.1 |
The Hynix-based 3700 Gold Rev. 3 takes a different approach to memory performance. As a value memory, it does not perform as well as Samsung TCCD at DDR400, but it is very competitive with the best memory available in the DDR440 to DDR533 range. In this "sweet spot", range Rev. 3 is very good. At the top, R3 also does not reach quite as far as the best TCCD, but look closely at the test results. OCZ Gold Rev. 3 achieved the same DDR546 memory speed at both 2T and 1T Command Rates. In other words, Command Rate did not seem to affect the memory overclock. This 273 CPU frequency is very close to the best 1T settings that we could achieve with TCCD, so Gold R3 performs nearly as well as the top memory in the roundup, looking at the results for Highest Memory Performance.
In the end, you should look at the price of OCZ 3700 Gold Rev. 3 compared to Samsung TCCD modules. If the Gold R3 is cheaper, it is a good alternative to Samsung TCCD or Crucial Ballistix. We can say with confidence that the latest Hynix DT-D5 chips do perform very well on Athlon 64, with none of the performance penalty that we have seen in the past with some memory chips on Athlon 64.
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saechaka - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
i can't seem to find a legit place to buy that ocz 3200 rev. 2. any suggestionsAvalon - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Excellent article. It's good to know what different memories can do on the Athlon 64 platform.ramclocker - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
14The psu is probably around 20A on the 12V...I know from my testing 20A doesn't cut it anymore on a high end gaming/benching rig....you also have to remember that at high speed the ram will be drawing high levels of current also and the board will draw higher current due to heat etc.
I found the article an excellent read due to the fact it finally proved to me with reasonably tight timings running high fsb over 2-2-2 at 200 is the way to go...running 2.4gig for all tests Wes was the wise move here...great work.
Blappo - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
The computer would probably wouldn't use more than 250W. I understand that you don't want to mention the make and model. The nVidia 6800 Ultra draws most of its power through the 12V connection to the PSU, where the ATI 9800 Pro draws its power from the AGP slot. What is the max current rating on the 12V rail for the 465W PSU that you were using? I agree that a high quality PSU is needed (although not necessarily high max rating).Wesley Fink - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
#12 - The Asus A8V is reviewed at http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2128 and compared to other 939 boards. In memory testing we use a standard test bed to minimize variables.#11 - The 90nm Athlon 64 tests should appear next week. We have just received 90nm 3500+ and 3000+ processors. AMD did not do a media launch on these processors, so we had to find them on the open market
#9 and #11 - A Value RAM roundup is in the works, but it has been moved out a while because of a large number of new launches this month.
Deuce - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
It sure would be nice with tests also conducted on the Asus A8V. I'm still deciding between the two.PrinceGaz - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Just to follow up that comment, I suppose the DDR533/2.4GHz results are actually the most useful out of them all when it comes to comparing those particular modules. All of them were fastest (at 2.4GHz) at that speed, except for the OCZ PC3200 Plat Rev.2 which was marginally faster at 8x300 for DDR600.Anyway, I'm looking forward to the reviews of the desktop 90nm A64 processors, and especially finding out how well each of them overclocks.
And also the Value Memory review you promised a few weeks ago :)
PrinceGaz - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Although all the (admittedly premium quality)memory could reach very high speeds, that didn't have much impact on performance.Taking the highest clocking brand as an example, the OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev.2, from the DDR400 2-2-2 speed to the DDR534 2.5-4-3 speed which was the best result still at a CPU speed of 2.4GHz, the results were
Quake 3: 516.3 -> 525.8
Super PI: 80 -> 79 (lower is better)
Wolf: 110.8 -> 112.7
So running the memory at DDR534 instead of DDR400 provided less than 2% increase in performance. This is to be expected when you compare the real-world performance of S754 and S939. The only thing that is important is that the memory can do 1T command-rate to the maximum overclock of your A64 at default multiplier.
I think the results on the highest memory performance page are probably misleading to some readers. It shows the Crucial Ballistix coming in at 536.5fps on Q3. Looking at the results I see that was at 9x278 for a CPU speed of 2.5GHz. Your CPU was able to reach over 2.6GHz so the performance in real world tests would have been somewhat higher with a 10x multiplier. Sandra results are irrelevant to most people.
It would be better if you included an additional test in addition to Highest Memory Speed, and Highest Memory Performance. This would be Highest CPU Speed where the CPU is maxxed out, and the memory run at whatever multiplier gives best performance on real-world tests (ignoring Sandra). I suspect the results would be a *lot* closer.
AtaStrumf - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Now about some value RAM tests? These modules are just too expensive for most of us.Jalf - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Or maybe the "average" user would rather blow $200 on 1GB memory ;)