Mobos with 875P chipset slower with 4 ram sticks?

[joey]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Surprise! Less memory might speed up photoshop and other programs.
See the article at
http://firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part2/page14.asp

They tested several platforms including a Pentium on a board with the
875P (Canterwood) chipset. They compared 2 memory sticks of 512MB
(1GB) to 4 memory sticks of 512MB (2GB). The memory was DDR400.
Their tests showed the 1GB system was faster, sometimes by a
significant margin.

At least one reason for the decreased performance is that the 875P
increases memory latency if you use more than 2 sticks of memory.

In a forum on the same site the article authors acknowledge that some
of the slowdown with 4 memory sticks might be specific to the
motherboard in their system. They were not using an ASUS board.

This article is of great interest to me since I'm planning to build a
system for running photoshop based on the ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
motherboard which uses the 875P chipset.

Any comments on the above article? Some googling failed to find much
discussion based on the article's findings.

Anyone else out there have any data on photoshop performance on a 875P
system with 2 sticks of ram compared to 4 sticks?

If there really is a significant photoshop performance hit when
running 4 sticks of ram, then the best memory configuration for
photoshop might be 2 sticks of 1024 ram (2GB). This would be a
matched pair running in dual channel mode.

Joey

 

[joey]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Thanks Paul. I have absorbed a number of your other posts.

The thing I like about this report is that they took a stock PC, only
changed memory (2 v. 4 sticks), and then measured the time it took
real world apps to do things. Yes, the striking difference in time
they measured could be due to:
A. 2 v. 4 sticks of RAM
B. Motherboard
C. BIOS
D. The list goes on........

But the time performance they measured is so significant that I am
amazed that the online community has not poked at this with various
folks reporting their results with 2 v. 4 sticks to see if 4 sticks
really is the most important factor in this performance penalty.

Sorry but even though I'm most curious on this issue, if I go with
2x1024 I will not be able to post any results myself comparing 2 v. 4
sticks of RAM since I will have only the 2 sticks.

Joey

> One of the problems with any review articles, is you don't know
> how competent the reviewers are at configuring the system.
>
> I have yet to see an article that compares all aspects of memory
> performance on 875/865. Here are the issues that affect performance:

<...snip...>
>
> Whatever you decide, post back any significant results of
> your testing
>
> HTH,
> Paul

 

[Paul]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

In article <f1e1b86f.0409291918.6fcf11cf@posting.google.com>,
jelfelt@hotmail.com (Joey) wrote:

> Thanks Paul. I have absorbed a number of your other posts.
>
> The thing I like about this report is that they took a stock PC, only
> changed memory (2 v. 4 sticks), and then measured the time it took
> real world apps to do things. Yes, the striking difference in time
> they measured could be due to:
> A. 2 v. 4 sticks of RAM
> B. Motherboard
> C. BIOS
> D. The list goes on........
>
> But the time performance they measured is so significant that I am
> amazed that the online community has not poked at this with various
> folks reporting their results with 2 v. 4 sticks to see if 4 sticks
> really is the most important factor in this performance penalty.
>
> Sorry but even though I'm most curious on this issue, if I go with
> 2x1024 I will not be able to post any results myself comparing 2 v. 4
> sticks of RAM since I will have only the 2 sticks.
>
> Joey

You cannot think of a single benchmark you could run ?
Like Sandra buffered and unbuffered ? Maybe some kind
of standard Photoshop benchmark ? Anything that someone
else can reproduce is a start. The thing is, if no one
posts data on the configs they've got, there is no place
to start. Even posting the bandwidth number printed
on the screen while running memtest86 from memtest.org
is better than nothing (the test program is free).

Paul

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Your message caught my eye because I recently built a system for Photoshop
work. I don't know if the following will help, but here's some information:

My system:
ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1002)
Pentium 4, 3.0C
2GB Mushin PC3200 Blue RAM -- 4-512 DIMMS
Matrox G450 video card—for primary monitor
Matrox Millennium PCI video card—for second monitor
2—WD 120GB HD (1 SATA; 1 EIDE); DVD-RW/CD-RW drive
Windows XP Home SP2

Memtest86+ v.1.26 shows:
Pentium 4 (0.13) 2998 Mhz
L1 Cache 8K 24575MB/s
L2 Cache 512K 20966MB/s
Memory 2047M 2390MB/s
Chipset i848/i865
FSB 1999
RAM 199Mhz/DDR398
CAS 2-3-4-7 (set at the suggestion of Mushkin tech support when I had
Memtest errors on test #10)
Dual channel (128 bits)
PAT and ECC disabled

Prime95 Benchmark:
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
CPU speed: 2998.51 MHz
CPU features: RDTSC, CMOV, PREFETCH, MMX, SSE, SSE2
L1 cache size: 8 KB
L2 cache size: 512 KB
L1 cache line size: 64 bytes
L2 cache line size: 128 bytes
TLBS: 64
Prime95 version 23.8, RdtscTiming=1
Best time for 384K FFT length: 11.933 ms.
Best time for 448K FFT length: 14.192 ms.
Best time for 512K FFT length: 16.233 ms.
Best time for 640K FFT length: 19.414 ms.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 23.734 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 28.035 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 31.318 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 40.974 ms.
Best time for 1536K FFT length: 50.564 ms.
Best time for 1792K FFT length: 59.961 ms.
Best time for 2048K FFT length: 67.714 ms.

John



"Paul" <nospam@needed.com> wrote in message
news:nospam-3009040246410001@192.168.1.177...
> In article <f1e1b86f.0409291918.6fcf11cf@posting.google.com>,
> jelfelt@hotmail.com (Joey) wrote:
>
>> Thanks Paul. I have absorbed a number of your other posts.
>>
>> The thing I like about this report is that they took a stock PC, only
>> changed memory (2 v. 4 sticks), and then measured the time it took
>> real world apps to do things. Yes, the striking difference in time
>> they measured could be due to:
>> A. 2 v. 4 sticks of RAM
>> B. Motherboard
>> C. BIOS
>> D. The list goes on........
>>
>> But the time performance they measured is so significant that I am
>> amazed that the online community has not poked at this with various
>> folks reporting their results with 2 v. 4 sticks to see if 4 sticks
>> really is the most important factor in this performance penalty.
>>
>> Sorry but even though I'm most curious on this issue, if I go with
>> 2x1024 I will not be able to post any results myself comparing 2 v. 4
>> sticks of RAM since I will have only the 2 sticks.
>>
>> Joey
>
> You cannot think of a single benchmark you could run ?
> Like Sandra buffered and unbuffered ? Maybe some kind
> of standard Photoshop benchmark ? Anything that someone
> else can reproduce is a start. The thing is, if no one
> posts data on the configs they've got, there is no place
> to start. Even posting the bandwidth number printed
> on the screen while running memtest86 from memtest.org
> is better than nothing (the test program is free).
>
> Paul

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Your message caught my eye because I recently built a system for Photoshop
work. I don't know if the following will help, but here's some information:

My system:
ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe (BIOS 1002)
Pentium 4, 3.0C
2GB Mushin PC3200 Blue RAM -- 4-512 DIMMS
Matrox G450 video card—for primary monitor
Matrox Millennium PCI video card—for second monitor
2—WD 120GB HD (1 SATA; 1 EIDE); DVD-RW/CD-RW drive
Windows XP Home SP2

Memtest86+ v.1.26 shows:
Pentium 4 (0.13) 2998 Mhz
L1 Cache 8K 24575MB/s
L2 Cache 512K 20966MB/s
Memory 2047M 2390MB/s
Chipset i848/i865
FSB 1999
RAM 199Mhz/DDR398
CAS 2-3-4-7 (set at the suggestion of Mushkin tech support when I had
Memtest errors on test #10)
Dual channel (128 bits)
PAT and ECC disabled

Prime95 Benchmark:
Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
CPU speed: 2998.51 MHz
CPU features: RDTSC, CMOV, PREFETCH, MMX, SSE, SSE2
L1 cache size: 8 KB
L2 cache size: 512 KB
L1 cache line size: 64 bytes
L2 cache line size: 128 bytes
TLBS: 64
Prime95 version 23.8, RdtscTiming=1
Best time for 384K FFT length: 11.933 ms.
Best time for 448K FFT length: 14.192 ms.
Best time for 512K FFT length: 16.233 ms.
Best time for 640K FFT length: 19.414 ms.
Best time for 768K FFT length: 23.734 ms.
Best time for 896K FFT length: 28.035 ms.
Best time for 1024K FFT length: 31.318 ms.
Best time for 1280K FFT length: 40.974 ms.
Best time for 1536K FFT length: 50.564 ms.
Best time for 1792K FFT length: 59.961 ms.
Best time for 2048K FFT length: 67.714 ms.

John


"Paul" <nospam@needed.com> wrote in message
news:nospam-3009040246410001@192.168.1.177...
> In article <f1e1b86f.0409291918.6fcf11cf@posting.google.com>,
> jelfelt@hotmail.com (Joey) wrote:
>
>> Thanks Paul. I have absorbed a number of your other posts.
>>
>> The thing I like about this report is that they took a stock PC, only
>> changed memory (2 v. 4 sticks), and then measured the time it took
>> real world apps to do things. Yes, the striking difference in time
>> they measured could be due to:
>> A. 2 v. 4 sticks of RAM
>> B. Motherboard
>> C. BIOS
>> D. The list goes on........
>>
>> But the time performance they measured is so significant that I am
>> amazed that the online community has not poked at this with various
>> folks reporting their results with 2 v. 4 sticks to see if 4 sticks
>> really is the most important factor in this performance penalty.
>>
>> Sorry but even though I'm most curious on this issue, if I go with
>> 2x1024 I will not be able to post any results myself comparing 2 v. 4
>> sticks of RAM since I will have only the 2 sticks.
>>
>> Joey
>
> You cannot think of a single benchmark you could run ?
> Like Sandra buffered and unbuffered ? Maybe some kind
> of standard Photoshop benchmark ? Anything that someone
> else can reproduce is a start. The thing is, if no one
> posts data on the configs they've got, there is no place
> to start. Even posting the bandwidth number printed
> on the screen while running memtest86 from memtest.org
> is better than nothing (the test program is free).
>
> Paul