Socket AM2 Platform Performance Investigation

DDR2-800 Overclocking Performance Unleashed

by Aleksey Razin

[ 04/17/2006 | 04:48 PM ]

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.

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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