The Test
Unfortunately the platform that we were testing on would only allow us to run our DDR2-800 at 4-5-4 timings, instead of the 3-3-3 that's possible with this memory on socket 775. That hurts performance a bit, but the real world difference between 4-5-4 and 3-3-3 isn't going to be more than a few percentage points.
The only DDR2-800 we had on hand was in the form of 1GB modules, so we had to use a pair of 1GB DDR-400 which ran at 2-3-2, instead of the 2-2-2 we normally run with our smaller 512MB modules. Once again, the difference in performance isn't tremendous, but we wanted to explain why the timings were different than what we've used in the past.
Both our Socket-AM2 and Socket-939 Athlon 64 X2 processors ran at the same clock speed with the same cache sizes, so the results should give us a clear indication of whether or not AM2 is faster than equivalent 939 configuration.
| CPU: | AMD Athlon 64 X2 Socket-AM2 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Socket-939 |
| Motherboard: | ASUS A8N32-SLI (Socket-939) Unnamed MCP55 Socket-AM2 Motherboard |
| Chipset: | NVIDIA nForce4 SLI x16 NVIDIA MCP55 |
| Chipset Drivers: | nForce4 6.70 |
| Hard Disk: | Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA |
| Memory: | OCZ PC8000 DDR2-800 4-5-4-15 (1GB x 2) OCZ DDR-400 2-3-2 (1GB x 2) |
| Video Card: | NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21 |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz |
| OS: | Windows XP Professional SP2 |
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AdamK47 3DS - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Conroe WILL perform better than AM2 no matter how much spin people try to put on it.bob661 - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
How can you say this when there are exactly NO shipping Conroe parts? I THINK that Conroe will be competitive but even that opinion is speculation at best. YOU won't know shit about Conroe until it shows up at Newegg!Shintai - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
If your logic applies, then he wont know anything about Conroe until he got it at home and working. So get over it, even the ES samples out in the wild kicks AMD so hard. The only question was if AM2 would bring extra performance to compete against Conroe, and it surely didn´t. Conroe prices also leaves AMD in the utter dust along with performance. 300$ Conroe E6600 chip or a 1200$ FX62? And the E6600 will be faster in most situations. You gotta be some extreme hardcore fanboi not to go Conroe.bob661 - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
There's nothing to get over, asswipe. You nor he knows for sure how Conroe performs, period! You can fanboi me all you want. Facts are facts. When they ship and there are 3rd party benchmarks on 3rd party machines tested, then we'll all know for sure how they'll perform. Puff, puff, pass man, puff, puff pass.Shintai - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?1">http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?1http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?2">http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?2
http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?3">http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?3
http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?4">http://vic.expreview.com/read.php?4
Now cry me a river again and keep whining over something new.
AnnonymousCoward - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
That's the crappiest website ever! I think a modem is hosting it. Plus it's retarded how the pictures shrink after they're loaded.Furen - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
I wouldn't compare the pricing quite yet. AMD's AM2 pricing is for May 5th while Conroe's is for launch day... whenever that happens (and before you say June/July, Intel itself said that it would launch as close to the beginning of Q3 as possible but did not commit to an early Q3 launch).Another thing, I have yet to see an E6600 being tested in "most situations", so until I see so, I'll say that your assumption that this is true is a bit irresponsible and fanboyish. Especially so if you consider that neither of the two CPUs (AM2 K8s and Conroes) can be bought quite yet, so convincing someone that one is a better deal is a bit premature. Personally, I think that AMD is going to get its ass handed to it by Conroe but I wouldn't go our of my way to swear it.
redbone75 - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
Wow. Only twenty posts until someone put up something about Conroe performance. In case you haven't been reading AM2 news or even read the article, AM2 is supposed to launch in June and here we are in April with a preview that, for the most part, is pretty disappointing for anyone that had high hopes for a Conroe challenger. This is just like when Intel migrated to DDR2: it wasn't really necessary but it will give AMD experience for when they can really use it. However, I'm thinking it won't take AMD as long to see more noticeable performance gains with DDR2 than Intel. Regarding Conroe, any way you call it the chip is going to kick some serious @$$, especially if Intel doesn't have any problems ramping up the clock speed. Also, Conroe is still several months away, so unlike AMD, Intel still has some time to tweak the chip for even more performance for its scheduled launch time (won't say date because there is none yet), so who is to say that the current performance claims are bogus. Even if they are now, which I seriously doubt, there just might be enough time for Intel to live up to the hype anyway.MrKaz - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
I'm not sure,but I think anandtech tested it at 533Mhz again, or
the processor is locked at 533Mhz.
Why did anandtech do the test only at 800Mhz?
Why didn’t test 533Mhz and 667Mhz DDR2 modules?
Because looking at those numbers:
-DDR2 533 will achive less bandwidth than DDR400?
-The latency of DDR2 is lower than DDR1?!?!
-Is the processor already full, so doesn’t need more bandwidth, and only at (theorical) 4GHz and beyond will use it?
defter - Monday, April 10, 2006 - link
At higher speeds yes. Of course 3-4-3 @ 400MHz (DDR2-800) will offer lower latency than 2-2-2 @ 200MHz (DDR1-400).