4 Dual vs 2 dual

[crazyj]

I've got a question, on the recently done article titled "Welcome The Latecomer: Pentium 4 Prescott 3.4 GHz" THG used 4x256 Dual channel sticks for the Intel chipsets, yet they used 2x512 Dual channel sticks for the AMD chipsets. Why is this? Do the intel run better this way or is it just something that had to happened due to hardware available and doesnt really affect anything?

This just really got me curious.

 

[Crashman]

The more modules you use, the greater your likelyhood of experiencing timing issues that cause system crashes. This is true of all chipsets, but the early A64 chipsets had even greater timing issues than the P4 when used with 4 DIMMs. Chances are the memory they could find was barely stable enough for the P4 and just couldn't cut it with the A64 in 4 modules.

The should have used 2 modules for both platforms if they wanted to compare them.

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[Obtuse]

Of course, then aren't we hampering the P4 by making it use a substandard configuration? Of course then it wouldn't be a "true" comparison, but I would care more about which runs faster in its usual configuration.

 

[Crashman]

I think using 2 modules on a P4 for comparison purposes is fine, that's still dual channel. Better yet if those 2 modules are double sided from the test I've seen.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Obtuse]

Also in that article, I believe they tried to run the systems in the fastest possible config. For a P4, that was probably the 4X256, because the 256 modules can support a lower latency. They couldn't do that for AMD because it wasn't stable with all 4 dimms filled.

"The only way to overcome temptation is to yield to it" - Oscar Wilde