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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
Zebo - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=328636mkruer - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
If you get the chance, can you please test with 2GB of PC3200? I’m sure most would love to see what type of performance hit there will be with the larger modules vs. the smaller ones. Looking at the benches so far, it looks like even buying the cheap 1GB PC3200 modules will have negligible impact on the performance as long as the times are kept relatively low (under 3cls.) And one more big IF you could test 4x512 PC3200 with lower clock timings (2-2-2-5) vs 2x1024 PC 3200 with timings of (3-3-3-8) I’m sure that for the average user they would rather blow $400 for 2GB of slow memory then $400 for 1GB of fast memory.Zebo - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
spensive!:(p/p is horrendous for this stuff. It's too bad you don't include micron/crucial 8t in there which can also clock to 260 for half the price.
Kishkumen - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
I've loved all of these recent memory articles. For a while now, the current state of memory in general has been the fuzziest for me. Now I'm starting to get a clearer picture of where things are at and which direction to go. I'm still nursing along my old P4 Northwood, but the A64 plunge is imminent. Nice to see that memory development is keeping up at a strong pace what with 600 MHz speeds now a strong reality.RaistlinZ - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Thank you for the great article! From your tests it looks like the OCZ 3200 Rev.2 is the best of the best. It performed near the top in every test and edged out the Crucial Ballistix at the highest speeds.I guess my choice for a memory upgrade is clear now. :)
klah - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
Seems you cut something off at the end of page 9"We have asked AMD to provide some insight into why we are "...
skiboysteve - Friday, October 1, 2004 - link
excellent article, ill keep this in mind when I upgrade... im still pluggin on a TbredB @ 2.2 w/ a modded 9500nonpro