Performance

Memory Subsystem Synthetic Benchmarks

First of all let’s check out the practical bandwidth and latency of the new DDR3 SDRAM. For our tests we chose Everest Ultimate Edition 4.20 utility.

During the practical bandwidth tests DDR3 SDRAM finally starts showing a significant advantage over the previous generation memory type. The DDR3 SDRAM frequency has evidently grown high enough, so that its typical high latencies no longer play the primary role in determining the performance. At least, when we are talking about streaming reads from the memory.

Writing speed into the memory is limited by the processor bus practical bandwidth that is why the results of the second Everest test cannot give us any new food for thought.

It is not only the bandwidth but also the practical latency that affect the copy speed in the memory. Therefore, this test clearly indicates that it is still too early to claim indisputable victory of high-speed DDR3-1800 over overclocker DDR2 memory.

However, DDR3-1800 with low 7-7-7-20 timings is determined to win the first prizes in most complex benchmarks. Its latency test result exceeds the achievements of overclocker DDR2 SDRAM. And this is the first time something like that happens during our numerous new memory tests.

To make the final conclusions let’s turn to complex benchmarks and real applications.