When would memory bandwith matter?

[Ph33zy]

Everyone talks about how much bandwith RDRAM has over DDR. I was just wondering in what applications would memory bandwith have a real impact? I am still deciding whether to run my 1.6@2.2 and PC1100 speeds or 1.6@2.4 at PC900 speeds.

 

[BFG10K]

In the case of the Pentium4 the extra memory bandwidth provided by RDRAM over DDR266 is always a benefit because the processor architecture itself is designed for high memory bandwidth.

Of course new platforms using DDR33 and DDR400 are quite comparable to RDRAM anyway so in pratice the difference is much smaller. Personally I wouldn't worry about RDRAM at all.

 

[HelzBelz]

Originally posted by: Ph33zy
Everyone talks about how much bandwith RDRAM has over DDR. I was just wondering in what applications would memory bandwith have a real impact? I am still deciding whether to run my 1.6@2.2 and PC1100 speeds or 1.6@2.4 at PC900 speeds.

If you already own the hardware : try both speeds, run your own benchmarks and/or the applications YOU use the most...

Either faster RAM (on a 2.2GHz system) or a faster 2.4GHz processor (with slower RAM) will yield improvements in different situations...

If you're starting from scratch, then it's a different question (already discussed in different threads).

What software do you use the most ?