Monday, April 17, 2006

Socket AM2 Platform Performance Investigation. DDR2-800 Overclocking Performance Unleashed

4:48 pm | Aleksey Razin

The last Socket AM2 processor revision has already demonstrated a slight but steady advantage over the processors working at the same clock speeds but designed in Socket 939 form-factor. Nobody expected a significant performance jump from the new platform, but at the same time we hoped to get a pleasing performance improvement. Especially, since the competing Conroe processors are ready to compete not only against the predecessors, but also against the newcomers designed in Socket AM2 package.

The respected AnandTech web-site posted another performance report for the Socket AM2 processor from the “almost ready samples”. This time they managed to update the mainboard BIOS and use DDR2-1000 memory that can work in DDR2-800 mode with 3-3-3-10 timing settings. These are the today’s most aggressive timing settings for the memory of this type therefore they can truly reflect the peak performance that can be achieved with DDR2-800 memory on Socket AM2 processors.

As a competitor to this new memory they have chosen DDR500 that can work in DDR400 mode with 2-2-2-7 timings. This is also the top work mode that many of the DDR400 memory modules available in the today’s market can support. That is why the performance comparison between the Socket 939 and Socket AM2 platforms was conducted on the highest level. Now let’s say a few words about the results.

First of all, our colleagues from AnandTech site made a very important conclusion. The current revision of Socket AM2 processors that is most likely to become the final revision for the June launch, demonstrates a performance improvement over the Socket 939 platform between DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 already. In fact, if you wish to have your Socket AM2 platform outperform the previous generation platform, you don’t have to hunt for more expensive DDR2-800 memory. You can do very well with DDR2-533 or DDR2-667 with relatively low timings.

The performance advantage of Socket AM2 in real applications (mostly games, this time) didn’t go over a few percents having reached the maximum of 6-7%. The most interesting thing here that even when they overclocked the memory to DDR500 and DDR2-833 respectively, the proportion we have just mentioned remained the same. The synthetic tests indicated the increase in the memory bandwidth and lowering of the memory latencies, but in real tasks the performance difference remained unchanged. It actually proves that it doesn’t make sense to overclock memory on the new Socket AM2 platform until the new processor revisions acquire all appropriate optimizations.

Finally, Socket AM2 platform will need significant architectural improvements to be able to beat Conroe processor, and they cannot really succeed by simply replacing the supported memory type. Maybe larger cache will be a more efficient tool here, and when they switch to 0.065micron production technology AMD is very likely to take advantage of this opportunity for their Socket AM2 platform. In the meanwhile, we shouldn’t expect any wonders: new processor revisions can only gradually improve the performance in the logical course of events.

• First Look: AM2 DDR2 vs. 939 DDR Performance

Quad SLI May Increase Performance, But May Degrade Too – Tech Preview. Web-Site Previews 4-Way SLI Technology

4:13 pm | Anton Shilov

Nvidia’s multi-GPU technology has come a long way and is currently featured in numerous systems designed for performance-minded enthusiasts. However, the introduction of ATI CrossFire multi-GPU platform allowed ATI to return to the ultra-performance space with quite a decent offering. But Nvidia still wants to be one step ahead and its quad SLI multi-GPU technology is just a yet another proof for that. 

MVKTech web-site has managed to lay its hands on two GeForce 7900 GX2 graphics cards that feature two GeForce 7900 graphics chips per unit, benchmark them in several popular benchmarks, overclock them, analyze how those dual-PCB graphics boards work and also write some thoughts about owning ultra-high performance system featuring Nvidia quad SLI technology. 

Each GeForce 7900 GX2 graphics card has two GeForce 7900-series graphics processors clocked at 500MHz and is equipped with 1GB of 1200MHz GDDR3 memory in total (512MB of memory with 256-bit access per chip). Two of such graphics cards enable quad SLI systems. 

Performance tests run by the web-site show that the biggest gain the 4-way SLI has over 2-way SLI is in case of the 3DMark03 benchmark – about 20% (34640 versus 29 001), a slight performance increase of 7% (8492 vs. 7924) was observed in 3DMark06, whereas in the 3DMark05 performance actually degraded by 1% (12 797 versus 12915) on 4-way SLI compared to 2-way SLI. The testbed used for experiments was based on AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 microprocessor and was equipped with 1GB of memory.

X-bit labs managed to get 14 344 points in 3DMark05 and 8917 points in 3DMark06 benchmarks using Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire tandem and AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 chip.

MVKTech has also managed to run some benchmarks in 2560x1600 resolution, the setting recommended by Nvidia for quad SLI game-play, while in some cases 4-GPU system was considerably faster compared to dual-GeForce 7900 GTX setup, in other it was just on par or even behind, which may indicate that there are still some driver issues with the technology.

Systems with quad SLI allow to turn on 32x antialiasing, the maximum level possible today, or to play the latest games in 2560x1600 resolution with all the quality improvement features activated. According to benchmark results obtained by MVKTech, four GeForce 7900 graphics processors may not only provide only slight performance advantages over two of such chips, but may even degrade performance, unless eye-candy settings are activated. 

• MVKTech: Nvidia GeForce 7900 GX2 1GB Quad SLI.

U.S. Operator Sprint Unveils Family Locator Service. Sprint Uses Cell Phone Networks to Locate Family Members

4:09 pm | Anton Shilov

Sprint, the No.3 mobile service provider in the U.S., has unveiled a service that will help parents to locate their children or other family members that carry mobile phones. However, some analysts believe that for roughly $10 per month the locator service may not be adopted by wide audiences.

“Sprint Family Locator is a valuable tool that can help parents and guardians have a better sense of their children’s whereabouts when they’re apart. This is the latest Sprint innovation that uses GPS technology to improve the way families connect, communicate and locate one another,” said Danny Bowman, vice president of product marketing for Sprint. 

Sprint’s service shows data such as street addresses to which a child is close and the estimated accuracy of the reading, which could range from a radius of 2 yards around the child to a radius of hundreds of yards, according to Reuters news-agency. Family members can use mobile phones or computer software to locate others. U.S. cell network operators are obliged to employ location technology so that safety workers could locate emergency callers, the Family Locator is a way to make money out of the technology that should be used by law.

“$9.99 monthly service fee, and a slim consumer demand for people-finding services, may limit Sprint's success at using the latest offer to boost its family customer numbers,” Marina Amoroso, an analyst with Yankee Group, is reported to have said.  

“Before this service comes down in price, I think it will be marginal,” she said, estimating that about 2 percent of U.S. subscribers are interested in people-locating services. 

Sprint said its location service would work on 17 of its phones and these phones could be used to locate children using as many as 30 phone models. 

• Sprint press release: Sprint Family Locator Helps Give Parents Peace of Mind.
• Reuters: Sprint Unveils Mobile Child Locator Service.

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