Athlon 64 X2: New Memory Dividers and Multitasking Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 12, 2005 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
PAR2 + Encoding
Creating and using parity files with archives is another very CPU and memory intensive task. We fired up Quickpar and restored a single file from an archive and its set of PAR2 files; alongside the PAR2 process, we performed a couple of tasks.First, let’s look at the archive reconstruction throughput without any other tasks:
| PAR2 Archive Reconstruction Rate in MB/s (Higher is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 | % Improvement |
| PAR2 | 931MB/s | 941MB/s | 1% |
DDR480 only offers a 1% performance advantage here, but now let’s add MP3 playback in the background:
| PAR2 Archive Reconstruction Rate in MB/s (Higher is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 | % Improvement |
| PAR2 + MP3 Decode | 904MB/s | 918MB/s | 1.5% |
The DDR480 performance advantage jumps to 1.5%, but now, let’s add a H.264 encode on top of that:
| PAR2 Archive Reconstruction Rate in MB/s (Higher is Better) | DDR400 | DDR480 | % Improvement |
| PAR2 + MP3 + H.264 Encode | 843MB/s | 880MB/s | 4.4% |
And now, we have a 4.4% performance advantage.
You can see how the performance differences scale according to the tasks that you’re pairing together.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
DDR480 is the fastest speed you can run on the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on the DFI board using the new dividers. DDR500 is possible on the Athlon 64 X2 3800+.Take care,
Anand
Diasper - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
Also, a further point might be to examine how running 4 x 512MB sticks at 2T might affect things - I guess we can say the bandiwidth loss of running it at 2T will affect performance significantly so compared to someone running DDR500 @1T with decent timings.Diasper - Friday, August 12, 2005 - link
Moreover, I guess AMD's move to DDR2 does begin to make sense as when both cores are fully taxed that bandwidth will be needed.DDR2 is set to get cheaper while timings are also tightening
eg Corsair's new 512MB sticks that are rated at 3-2-2 675mhz stuff and have been o/c to around 709mhz or their 1GB sticks which are doing 3-3-3 at DDR533 (http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=4&...">http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?page=4&...
In short it seems that DDR2 is getting much closer performancewise to DDR but offers guaranteed bandwidth which X2 can clearly benefit from. 1GB modules that do DDR500 are few and expensive whereas while that's still true of DDR2 now, DDR2 is still being developed where we will see future refinements providing lower latencies/higher speeds at an increasingly affordable price point - DDR is no longer being developed while it is feasible that DDR and especially premium sticks might get more expensive as the market slowly shrinks.
In all, AMD have probably picked a rather opportune time to migrate to DDR2.