DDR-SDRAM Has Finally Arrived

Features
By published

Expectations

Due to unfortunate constraints that were partly due to unsatisfying support by AMD we weren't able to run a full-blown scientific test suite, as I would have liked. Still we should see a clear advantage of the DDR-platforms in applications that need a lot of memory bandwidth, such as e.g. 3D-games. However, we should also not forget the days of the BX-introduction , when the 50%-increase in memory performance (from 66 to 100 MHz FSB) hardly showed in any benchmark.

Test Setup

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Hardware Setup
SDRAM Socket A platform for AMD Athlon and Duron ProcessorsASUS A7V, BIOS 1004D final
SDRAM Socket 370 platform for Intel Pentium III and Celeron processorsASUS CUSL2, BIOS 1003.004
SDRAM Memory128 MB Wichmann Workx PC133 SDRAM CL2, setting 2-2-2-5/7
DDR Socket A platform for AMD Athlon processors at 100 MHz Frontside BusGigabyte GA-7DX Rev.1.1, BIOS Rev.P15a 09/21/2000
DDR Socket A platform for AMD Athlon processors ar 133 MHz Frontside BusAMD Corona EVT7, BIOS acrd00-4 08/23/2000
DDR Socket 370 platfom for Intel Pentium III processorsVIA VT5322C, BIOS 9174-06p 10/25/2000
i840 PlatformIntel OR840, BIOS 245
i820 PlatfromAsus P3C-L, BIOS 1023 final
DDR Memory128 MB Micron CL2
Hard Drive for Windows 98 TestsIBM DTLA-307030 ATA100 IDE, 30 GB, FAT32
Hard Drive for Linux TestSeagate ST320430A ATA66 IDE, 19 GB, ext2
Graphics card for Sysmark2000, Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tornament and 3D Studio Max 2NVIDIA Geforce 2 GTS Reference CardCore Clock 200 MHz, Memory Clock 333 MHz, Driver 6.31
Graphics Card for SPECviewperfNVIDIA Quadro2 Reference CardCore Clock 230 MHz, Memory Clock 400 MHz, Driver 6.31
Software Setup
Windows VersionWindows98SE, 4.10.2222A
Windows Resolution for Sysmark20001024x768x16x85
Windows Resolution for SPECviewperf1280x1024x32x85
Linux VersionSuSE Linux 6.4, Kernel 2.2.14, THG benchmarking kernel, gcc 2.95.2
Quake 3 ArenaRetail Version SettingNormal, 640x480x16 bit color, no sound
Unreal TournamentVersion 4.28 (patched)Setting 640x480x16, no sound"
SPECviewperfRev. 6.1.2
MemtimeIntel Memory Transfer Timing Utility
MPEG4 Encoding SoftwareFlasK MPEG, ver. 0.594DivX ;) 3.11alpha