AMD M2 and DDR2

mordantmonkey

Diamond Member
Dec 23, 2004
3,075
5
0
Do you think DDR2 latencies will be improved enough by the time M2 comes out that it will actually be a performance advatage?
 

ub3rnewb

Member
Nov 2, 2005
170
0
0
Doubt it. DDR2 looks no better than DDR1 for the most part. A PC4000 DDR has the same timings as a PC2-4000 DDR2. I think DDR2 should be scrapped in favor of DDR3 or XDR.
 

tjpark1111

Senior member
Oct 5, 2005
287
0
0
Originally posted by: ub3rnewb
Doubt it. DDR2 looks no better than DDR1 for the most part. A PC4000 DDR has the same timings as a PC2-4000 DDR2. I think DDR2 should be scrapped in favor of DDR3 or XDR.
agreed, there was article on some site a while ago where top-of-the-line DDR2 memory had less than 4% increases on most benchmarks against DDR1 value ram.
 

Some1ne

Senior member
Apr 21, 2005
862
0
0
there was article on some site a while ago where top-of-the-line DDR2 memory had less than 4% increases on most benchmarks against DDR1 value ram.

The problem with articles like that are that they're benchmarking on an Intel system, which uses an external memory controller that adds its own latencies and other issues. It might just be that DDR1 is already fast enough to saturate the performance of the memory controller in the Intel system, so that's why DDR2 shows no gains. AMD uses an integrated memory controller, which might scale better with the increased bandwidth offered by DDR2, although we won't know for sure until AMD solutions are actually available and tested, and who knows when that will be?

Generally speaking, most of the more well-informed people seem to think that DDR2 will bring about a 10-15 percent performance gain to AMD platforms. I'm inclined to agree, until I see some actual benchmark results from an AMD-based DDR2 platform.
 

mordantmonkey

Diamond Member
Dec 23, 2004
3,075
5
0
well benches won't come until M2 actually comes out.

but i thought the major stumbling block for DDR2 was it's high latencies. If it had latencies equal to DDR1, would not the extra bandwidth of DDR2 become an advantage. Isn't added bandwidth the advantage of Dualchannel as well?

hmm i see your point about saturating intel memory controller. isn't the M2 supposed to have a memory controller even better than A64 (which already stomps intels mem ctrl)?
 

sonoma1993

Diamond Member
May 31, 2004
3,414
21
81
I think in the dual core system, the dual core chips will benefit more from ddr2 espically ddr2-800 in dual channel mode. Im not sure what the bandwidth of ddr2-800 is but im assuming it doulbe that of ddr400, what ddr 800 is what 6400
 

w00t

Diamond Member
Nov 5, 2004
5,545
0
0
Originally posted by: sonoma1993
I think in the dual core system, the dual core chips will benefit more from ddr2 espically ddr2-800 in dual channel mode. Im not sure what the bandwidth of ddr2-800 is but im assuming it doulbe that of ddr400, what ddr 800 is what 6400

I was under the impression they were going to use ddr-667...

 

sonoma1993

Diamond Member
May 31, 2004
3,414
21
81
Originally posted by: w00t
Originally posted by: sonoma1993
I think in the dual core system, the dual core chips will benefit more from ddr2 espically ddr2-800 in dual channel mode. Im not sure what the bandwidth of ddr2-800 is but im assuming it doulbe that of ddr400, what ddr 800 is what 6400

I was under the impression they were going to use ddr-667...

im not sure if they are using ddr2-800, you are probably right though they'll use ddtr2-667, But yeah I do think dual core systems will benefit more from ddr2 than single core systems.