Xbitlabs Ilya Gavrichenkov has posted his editorial called DDR400 SDRAM with Athlon XP Platform: Performance and Future Potential. With the new Athlon XP processor and Nvidia's nForce2 revision 2 mainboards hitting the market very soon, this should increase the performance of Socket A processors to a whole new level.
They are going to answer a few important questions in this article. First, an estimate of the performance growth provided by 400MHz bus. Second, they will check the capabilities of available DDR400 memory modules. Third, we will see how memory timings affect the overall system performance. Go ahead and reveal the potential of your Athlon XP based system. We have already told you a number of times on our site that very soon Intel is going to introduce a new 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus in systems based on Pentium 4 processor family. This is scheduled to happen in the middle of April and will be accompanied by the launch of new chipsets (Springdale and Canterwood) that support such system bus frequency and 200MHz FSB frequency. The boost of FSB bus bandwidth will require faster memory to use up the bigger processor bus bandwidth. While the new DDR II standard is far from entering the mass production phase yet, Intel suggests that we use dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM in new Pentium 4 based platforms. This fact means that DDR400 SDRAM is going to give up its reputation of the ?memory for overclockers? and become a mainstream product
But what about the Intel?s good old rival, AMD? Right now, Athlon XP family processors use 333MHz system bus and 166MHz FSB frequencies. Considering that most chipsets for Athlon XP quite naturally show their best performance in case the system and memory buses work synchronously, DDR333 SDRAM seems to be a preferable memory type for modern Socket A platforms. Thus, after the arrival of Pentium 4 with the 800MHz bus, AMD can find itself lagging behind as concerns the employed memory type. Of course, it?s theoretically possible to use DDR400 SDRAM with Athlon XP using 333MHz bus. But numerous tests prove that this brings no perceptible advantage from the performance point of view, or even slows the system down.
DDR400 SDRAM with Athlon XP Platform: Performance and Future Potential
They are going to answer a few important questions in this article. First, an estimate of the performance growth provided by 400MHz bus. Second, they will check the capabilities of available DDR400 memory modules. Third, we will see how memory timings affect the overall system performance. Go ahead and reveal the potential of your Athlon XP based system. We have already told you a number of times on our site that very soon Intel is going to introduce a new 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus in systems based on Pentium 4 processor family. This is scheduled to happen in the middle of April and will be accompanied by the launch of new chipsets (Springdale and Canterwood) that support such system bus frequency and 200MHz FSB frequency. The boost of FSB bus bandwidth will require faster memory to use up the bigger processor bus bandwidth. While the new DDR II standard is far from entering the mass production phase yet, Intel suggests that we use dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM in new Pentium 4 based platforms. This fact means that DDR400 SDRAM is going to give up its reputation of the ?memory for overclockers? and become a mainstream product
But what about the Intel?s good old rival, AMD? Right now, Athlon XP family processors use 333MHz system bus and 166MHz FSB frequencies. Considering that most chipsets for Athlon XP quite naturally show their best performance in case the system and memory buses work synchronously, DDR333 SDRAM seems to be a preferable memory type for modern Socket A platforms. Thus, after the arrival of Pentium 4 with the 800MHz bus, AMD can find itself lagging behind as concerns the employed memory type. Of course, it?s theoretically possible to use DDR400 SDRAM with Athlon XP using 333MHz bus. But numerous tests prove that this brings no perceptible advantage from the performance point of view, or even slows the system down.
DDR400 SDRAM with Athlon XP Platform: Performance and Future Potential
