Originally posted by: Zebo
Yeah
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1475190&enterthread=y
185Mhz CL2 hangs with 290Mhz CL3 what do you think's gonna happen when you cut the difference in half?
What are you talking about? That's absolutely not true given the link you posted. You really should have a better handle on the numbers, since
you're the one who made that whole post.
Let's break it down.
Sandra mem INT ALU:
PC3000 - 2-2-2 1T- 5602
PC4700 - 3-4-3 1T- 7272
Looks like the CL3 memory is 30% faster.
Sandra mem FLOAT FPU
PC3000 - 2-2-2 1T- 5603
PC4700 - 3-4-3 1T- 7267
Again the CL3 is 30% faster.
In the CPU benchmarks, the PC3000 CL2 memory "hangs with" the PC4700 CL3, but then again, so does the PC3000 CL3, because obviously memory speed doesn't affect that benchmark.
In the game benchmarks, you're really not proving anything at all, because you haven't isolated the RAM as a bottleneck. For example:
Half-life 2 1600x1200 in FPS
PC2300 - 3-3-3 1T- 98.77
PC3000 - 3-3-3 1T- 102.5
PC3000 - 2-2-2 1T- 106.0
PC4700 - 3-4-3 1T- 107.9
PC3800 - 2.5-2-2-1T - 107.3
Same as above. Save your money.
The PC3000 is almost as fast as the PC4700, but how do you know it isn't GPU limited? For God's sake, you're running in 1600x1200 with 6xAA and all the highest quality settings! It's just plain asinine to run 1600x1200 benchmarks with 6xAA and pretend it actually says something about system RAM performance.
Likewise, you have benchmarks like this:
Half-life 2 1024x768 in FPS
PC2300 - 3-3-3 1T- 113.3
PC3000 - 3-3-3 1T- 120.9
PC3000 - 2-2-2 1T- 131.6
PC4700 - 3-4-3 1T- 133.3
PC3800 - 2.5-2-2-1T - 134.4
It's nice to see you've taken a little stress of the video card by running at 1024x768, but what makes you think it isn't CPU limited once it gets up around 130 FPS? Again, you have to establish that you haven't hit the ceiling before you claim that the similar numbers mean anything, and you have done nothing to establish that the CPU and video card combination are capable of going to 140+ FPS in that setup.
It's actually a very reasonable assumption that no matter how fast the memory you stuck in there was -- maybe PC9999 CL0 -- isn't going to get that system to squeeze any more framerate out of HL2 with that CPU and video card.
I particularly love this one:
Farcry 1600x1200 in FPS
PC2300 - 3-3-3 1T- 62.25
PC3000 - 3-3-3 1T- 68.14
PC3000 - 2-2-2 1T- 71.31
PC4700 - 3-4-3 1T- 73.52
PC3800 - 2.5-2-2-1T - 74.42
On farcry, we see ~18% faster performance from the old ram. But only ~8% faster than value ram. hint: spend the xtra $100 on a better video card. Notice async low latency Ballistix owning all even 1:1 TCCD.
I'm not sure what you're saying here, but it looks like you're sticking your foot in your mouth. The 3.1% difference between the PC3000 CL2 and the PC4700 CL3 is insignificant, but the 1.2% advantage that the PC3800 Ballistix is "owning" the PC4700???
In the end, you may be 100% right, but you haven't come anywhere close to proving it.
Sandra's memory benchmark may not be a real-world test, but as far as memory performance is concerned, it's the only benchmark you have done which actually isolates the memory, and it shows that the PC4700 has a very large advantage, even at CL3.