Speaking about the exact memory frequency rates that can be set with the new dividers, they are all listed in the table below:

In order to actually use the dividers that would allow increasing the memory frequency over 200MHz, they should also be supported in the BIOS. It is true not only for those dividers that are greater than 1. Therefore, far not all the mainboards will let you take advantage of the frequencies listed above if you install an Athlon 64 processor with E core revision. However, if you are lucky to have one of the mainboards that do support these dividers, you will be able to use any memory faster than DDR400 SDRAM without any additional system overclocking. In other words, the CPUs on the new E core allow using overclocker-friendly memory without overclocking the CPU clock frequency generator and thus without raising the HyperTransport bus frequency.

In order to evaluate the advantages of the faster memory types, we carried out a test session where we compared the performance of Athlon 64 processor working with the regular DDR400 SDSRAM against that of the same processor working with faster DDR466 SDRAM and DDR500 SDRAM memory modules.

However, this is certainly not enough to provide an extensive analysis of the advantages resulting from the implementation of DDR4600 and DDR500 support. The thing is that many advanced users have been equipping their Athlon 64 systems with memory working at overclocked frequencies for quite a while now. This is a simple overclocking trick: by lowering the CPU clock multiplier and increasing the clock generator frequency. Contemporary chipsets allow clocking the PCI Express and PCI busses independently of the processor clock frequency generator that is why this trick works fine in most cases. As for the HyperTransport bus frequency, which is directly dependent on the processor clock generator frequency, it can still function normally if the corresponding multiplier is set at a lower value.

So, to check out all the smallest details, we will also consider the results obtained for the same processor but only when the clock generator frequency is increased above the nominal value, thus allowing higher memory working rates.

For our tests we used the same testbed, as the one described above. Athlon 64 3800+ on Venice core worked in four modes:

1. The clock frequency is set as 12 x 200MHz, memory works at 200MHz (DDR400) with 2-2-2-10 timings;
2. The clock frequency is set as 12 x 200MHz, memory works at 218MHz (DDR436) with 2-3-2-10 timings;
3. The clock frequency is set as 12 x 200MHz, memory works at 240MHz (DDR480) with 2-3-3-10 timings;
4. The clock frequency is set as 10 x 240MHz, memory works at 240MHz (DDR480) with 2-3-3-10 timings.

When we compare the performance of the system in these four work modes, we will be able to state what benefits the faster system memory support might grant Athlon 64 based systems. Besides, we will also see if the new work modes really make sense, or if the quality overclocker boards can grant us the same performance advantage without using the new frequency dividers.

Note that the differences in timing settings come from the peculiarities of the DIMM Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO memory modules we used that are built with widely spread Samsung TCCD chips.