OCZ Introduces DDR3-1800

by Wesley Fink on 7/31/2007 1:00 AM EST
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  • Mithan - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    I am guessing these games were run at 800x600, which is fairly standard for memory tests?

    IF that is the case, then all this article does is prove once again why over-spending on memory is not the best use of your dollars (except in the case of over-clocking)


    My point is this:
    Farcry going from 112 to 122 FPS is probably being done at 800x600 or 1024x768.

    Bump that resolution up to 1600x1200 or 1920x1200, and that becomes 1 or 2 frames per second difference.

    My point is that the article should articulate this difference better.
  • MadBoris - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    quote:

    I am guessing these games were run at 800x600, which is fairly standard for memory tests?
    IF that is the case, then all this article does is prove once again why over-spending on memory is not the best use of your dollars (except in the case of over-clocking)

    From a testing perspective of any hardware among each other, you have to isolate and remove the other bottlenecks. That should be done and is of course common sense. As you state, the main goal of these types of articles should at their very foundation stay focused on real world performance impact. Otherwise it looks too much like technology promotion and they lose their actual value to the reader. They don't have to go "real world" overboard, but I think that should be the consistent goal of hardware reviews.

    quote:

    Farcry going from 112 to 122 FPS is probably being done at 800x600 or 1024x768.
    Bump that resolution up to 1600x1200 or 1920x1200, and that becomes 1 or 2 frames per second difference.

    Test info would be nice.
    In the same vein of real world impact, the comparison should never have been between DDR3@800 compared to DDR3@2000. That's not even really applicable, the upgrade path isn't from DDR3 800, so I am not sure why the particular comparison was even made. The comparison at the very least, needs to be to current DDR2 offerings. The best case performance that DDR3 can provide right now is actually around 3 - 5 percent from current DDR2 offerings under those specific game tests (as I mentioned earlier), whatever those settings were.

    Obviously testing these memory comparisons isn't simple from an apples to apples standpoint especially with limited time, so I am just glad Anandtech is getting in there and doing the testing and making their findings known. :)
  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    Factoring in the slower performance of current 965/975 boards on p.4 of the article, you will see that DDR3-800 on the P35 clearly beats DDR2-800 on the P965 platform. In fact, DDR3 is generally faster than DDR2-1066 at 4-4-3 timings on the P965 (the only exception being Far Cry). Taking that into account our broad statement that current DDR3 can provide as much as an 8% to 10% real world performance improvement over current DDR2 systems is certainly fair.
  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    DDR2-800 is the fastest official JEDEC spec for DDR2, and memory running at 3-3-3 at that resolution is common among better DDR2. It is among the fastest DDR2 performance due to the fast timings. The fastest DDR2 can reach 1066 at slower timings but it cannot reach 1333.

    Similarly we would compare to DDR-400 at 2-2-2 looking at DDR, since this was the fastest JEDEC speed looking back at DDR. DDR3 starts at 800 and goes officially at the present time to DDR3-1600. It will likley go higher in the future.

    We have compared DDR3 to one of the fastest DDR2 memories ever made at the fastest timings available for DDR2 at both 800 and 1066 in the overlap speed results on p. 4. We also did not really factor in the fact that DDR2 runs slower on the P965, P975, and other current boards than it does on the DDR2 version of the current P35 chipset.

  • NegativeEntropy - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    I read through the article and (quickly) double checked the test config and gaming pages, but I did not see the settings the games were tested at?
  • Wesley Fink - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    All games were run at 1280x1024. That has been in past commentary, but was dropped somewhere along the way. We will add that info to the game results page.
  • Jodiuh - Wednesday, August 1, 2007 - link

    Unfortunately, you're right in the $$ issues. Those of us that would be willing to pay 2-3 times the amount for 10% gaming improvement would be better off w/ a better GPU, or even a Q66/X32 CPU for games like Supcom.

    Would you mind guessing what perf improvement would come from running @ say 1600x1200 or greater + 8xQ/6x AA? It'd be even less, no?
  • chizow - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Another underwhelming and unnecessary "update" to memory specifications. Just another example of the memory mfgs and motherboard makers forcing people to upgrade every few years for marginal performance gains. Oh well, good news is DDR2 is dirt cheap and has been for a while.
  • LTG - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    I started the complaint thread last time about the lack of comparable results, so I want to say this time:

    Great work, excellent article.

    I was a little taken aback by your heated reaction to criticism, due to the fact that I didn't provide the solution, but hey, that's kind of human nature and I'm sure I've done it before.

    The main point here is that AT not only has the best writers of any tech site, but also the only site where they are not afraid to allow feedback and actually engage debate on the issues.

    Tech articles are near impossible to get perfect, because there is so many details to know and new things are discovered across the net every hour. But don't every get discouraged, the effort is all appreciated.

    LTG

  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Thank you for your comments. They are sincerely appreciated.
  • MadBoris - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    "Far Cry sees a similar increase from 112.90 at 800 to 121.94 at DDR2-2000"
    I think you meant DDR3-2000. Although DDR2-2000, would be nice. ;)
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Corrected.
  • Spoelie - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    ...populating only one channel? With dual channel bandwidth exceeding double the bandwidth of the fsb, I'm curious as to how a single channel with equal or more bandwidth than the fsb would perform.
  • Myrandex - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Eh I hate it when people run dual channel boards in a single channel config. I remember a laptop review of the new Turion X2 and they were running it in single channel mode with onboard video. Heck where I work they do that all the time in the ATM systems that they manufacture. They pay for the dual channel chipset, yet they configure it to run in single channel mode.
  • YellowWing - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Thanks for keeping the CPU clock constant this time. We get the chance to see what the memory is adding without having to factor out the CPU clock changes. I look forward to new straps for a completely even test environment.
  • Wesley Fink - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    You're welcome. All of your suggestions on making this a better memory test platform were very helpful. We need 1600 and 2000 memory straps right now with DDR3 boards. I sincerely doubt that it even occurred to JEDEC and motherboard makers that we would be caring about DDR3-2000 this early in the development of DDR3. The memory speed development of DDR2 seems almost glacial by comparison.
  • mostlyprudent - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Although I did not participate in the discussion of the last article, I did follow it and want to tip my hat to Wes (and really all the AT authors) for being willing to engage readers in the comments and apply the feedback and critiques offered. This is why, IMHO, AT has continued to get better and better over the years.
  • qpwoei - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    As a critic of the last article, I'd like to chime in and say well done on this one as well. Unfortunately, I don't think you'll be seeing any > 1:1 ratios on external chipsets (ie: non-IMC) for a while, if ever. The design issues for making > 1:1 ratios really outweigh the benefits, especially in a system where the memory bandwidth is already twice the FSB bandwidth.
  • MadBoris - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Hey wesley,

    I also wanted to say thanks for the more apples to apples comparison with DDR2. I think this is really of utmost importance to most folks before we start comparing DDR3 among other DDR3 modules. As exciting as DDR3 is as a technology we still want to see the real world performance improvement over DDR2 to justify for ourselves any price increase with new purchases, let alone the three fold price increase. If I get 3 to 4 percent less performance for 1/3 the price then that is a good purchasing decision for me. All new memory suffers from these teething pains, I just wanted them quantifiable.

    In further search for the real world comparison and the true advantages that DDR3 brings at it's current highest speeds comared to DDR2 at it's highest speeds(1066 in this case), I did have to flip back and forth between pages 4 and 7 several times. With page 4 using a 2.66 GHZ CPU clock frequency and page 7 using 3GHZ, a direct comparison in the benchmark numbers themselves wasn't possible due to the 10% CPU difference. Initially page 7 scores looked much better than page 4 until I factored in the 10% CPU difference. It took a few minutes to come to a method of distinguishing the real world advantage of DDR3 running at it's highest speeds, compared to DDR2 at it's higher speeds.

    basically, I came to the conclusion if 1333 is where DDR3 starts to get it's legs and surpass DDR2(as you state on page 4). Page 4 doesn't actually show the 1333 speeds of DDR2 in the chart (as none exists), but you can see there is a minor advantage in the two games emerging over the previous chart with 1066 DDR2. So then comparing DDR3 at 1333 to DDR3 at highest speeds on page 7 gives me a rough estimate of the "real world" performance of DDR3 at it's highest speed over what DDR2 has it's highest speeds (with an additional 1% tossed in as advantage over 1066 ddr2). All this extrapolation was necessary due to the 10% CPU difference. Not complaing, just stating a fact in trying to get to the real world benefits if I was going to by a platform today, and having to justify the cost/performance ratio.

    In the end, the real world benefit of DDR3 at it's highest speeds, compared to a P35 running DDR2 at it's highest speeds(both with fastest timings using 1333 as the cutoff where DDR2 is left behind) came out to about 3 - 5 percent real world gaming benefit in benchmarks of Far Cry and Quake 4. Obviously the synthetics showed much more, but they always do. All that of course is based on the reality that 1333 is where the performance shift takes place with the current fastest DDR2 and fastest DDR3, which is what I was after. To me, 3 - 5 percent definitely doesn't justify 3 times the cost of the memory yet, especially if a board supports both DDR2 and DDR3.

    Anyway, thanks for making an apples to apples comparison more possible in this review, even though not exact, I could extrapolate the necessary info I wanted. I'm sure as latency continues to lower on DDR3, than all this additional frequency will be worth something beyond the current meager benefits over DDR2 at 1066.
  • indeed - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Is there any chance that we'll be seeing DDR2 1066 4GB packs with 2 modules any time soon?
  • Lonyo - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Any chances of a power consumption comparison between DDR2 and DDR3?
    DDR3 is supposed to run at a lower voltage, so in theory it might use a little less power. Would be interesting to see if there is any difference (DDR2/3-800 would probably be best, since that's a standard speed for both).
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Does anyone even sell a DDR3 capable motherboard yet ? If so, is anyone even using DDR3 ? Personally, I think latencies need to come down, Prices need to come down,etc. Memory companies are *claiming* they are taking a beating in the market for DDR2 (claiming all time low, and losing money . . .).Personally, I think you reap what you soe, and they got what they deserved for their early market prices.

    Anyhow, short and skinny, I think *we* all need to take things slowly this time around, OEMS, buyers, and reviewers . . .
  • yyrkoon - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    By the way, when I asked if anyone is even making a DDR3 motherboard yet, I was pretty much joking. Obviously if you're testing it, there has to be some form of a platform availible.

    You know, I cannot help but think that DDR2 was not quite 'finished' yet, and I do not understand the *need* for DDR3(unless OEMs are looking to rape our wallets again . . .). Of course, if 'Joe blow enthusiast' HAS to HAVE DDR3 memory because it gives him/her an extra 4-13 FPS in an outdated game at 2-3x the cost of DDR2 . . . well... lets just say that I expect that OCZ, Geil, and the rest would be more than happy to keep you poorer ;)

    Some of us actually like to upgrade smart, using as many parts from older machines as possible to save money for other things. This sort of marketing strategy makes it hard on us who would like to do so while keeping our system upgraded once a year or so. I just got over having to buy memory, CPU, and a motherboard the last 'technolgy' advance, and I really do not wish to repeat the process.
  • asliarun - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Man, I never understand viewpoints such as yours. This is a technology article on the latest DDR3 advancement, and is not marketing propoganda urging you to go out and buy it NOW. Intel's latest CPU chipsets (P35/P38, IIRC) all support DDR3 (along with DDR2), so it's not like DDR3 is exactly vaporware. Only AMD is not supporting DDR3 right now because firstly, they will need to upgrade their integrated uncore memory controller, and secondly, they tend support upcoming technologies much later than Intel. Furthermore, DDR3 is definitely the future as it has much more headroom than DDR2, and is designed to work at lower voltages.

    In any case, my point is that we're discussing a new memory standard technology which is already in the market and is slowly being adopted. Initially, it WILL be highly priced like any other technology until volume manufacturing kicks in. However, if you are a price sensitive customer instead of a "Joe blow enthusiast" (frankly, like most of us), no one is forcing you to replace your RAM with DDR3 TODAY, least of all this AT article. Your logic of not adopting DDR3 simply because it is initially expensive and because it only gives "4-13fps increase" is however, absurd. By the same token, there is no need for ANY technology improvement, especially those that *only* result in an incremental improvement.

    As a footnote, you should be grateful for all the "Joe blow enthusiasts" in this world instead of heaping scorn on them. All said and done, you and I ARE freeloading on him, as he's the one who's financing our cut rate technology purchases.
  • GlassHouse69 - Tuesday, July 31, 2007 - link

    Oh you think so?

    hm.... i wonder how much Anandtech/daily got for reviewing this... hm.....

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