Memory frequency performance scaling:These days there are two different types of common desktop platforms: the ones using a cpu with Integrated Memory Controller, such as AMD's Athlon64/Phenom and Intel's Core I7, and the ones with the memory controller inside the Northbridge. For the non-tech minded people under us, this may not seem to be that important -memory is still memory- but if you have a closer look at it, it actually does matter. Using an IMC has many advantages, the most important one being higher bandwidth and lower latencies, which will be translated into higher performance. And that's not so strange: the data lanes between memory and cpu, which serve as communication ports, are much shorter than those in an non-IMC platform. An example:
AMD Phenom <=> DDR2
Intel C2D <=> P45 <=> DDR2
In the first example, the latency is only bottlenecked by the length of the lane between cpu and memory, whereas in the second example, the latency is bottlenecked by both lanes between cpu and Northbridge and Northbridge and memory.
Test settings:
Core frequency: 3000MHz
HTT frequency: 200MHz
HT Link frequency: 1800MHz
Northbridge frequency: 1800MHz
Memory timings: 4-4-4-10 2T Ganged(*)
Variable:
Memory frequency: 200, 266, 333, 400 and 533MHz
(Click for bigger version)
The effect of an increase memory frequency is only noticeable in memory intensive benchmarks, or better put: memory benchmarks. In real-life applications or benchmarks for non-memory hardware you will see no significant increase in performance.
(*):Due to the design of the K10 processor, it's impossible to use memory timings below 4-5-5-X using the 533 divider. We used 4-5-5-16 in the comparison.
Nice to see you doing so well with the website as well.
I've received my Phenom II 940 review sample from AMD just today and I can't wait to take it for a late night overclocking session.
Grtz,
Sandstorm
Gamesplanet.be