DDR3 Memory: What Makes Performance Better?

AMD Test Results

On the AMD side there were far fewer problems than I expected, and all of those problems were very likely to happen with various AMD CPUs/motherboards and DRAM.

WinRAR File Compression

In the testing, using WinRAR, I compressed a video file that was 6.97GB in size. The time differential was minor across the sets. As would be expected, two of the CL10 sets came out on top, and were three of the top four sets. I also did the same with the DRAM at 1600/9.

While charts are nice, I'm more of a numbers guy. So to summarize a bit in the chart above, the time took compressing the file ranged from a top score of 4:39 by the Team Xtreem sticks to the slowest of 4:58. With the DRAM running at 1600, the range was from a fast time of 5:11 to a slow time of 5:21. Moving to 16GB of DRAM at 2400, the best time was more than a minute slower, at 5:38, and the worst was 5:47. Then, at the 8GB level, still at 2400, the fastest was 5:47 and the slowest was 6:01.                                             

As you can see, there is little difference between the sets, though the time it takes rises with the lower frequencies. This is one reason when people multitask and use memory-intensive applications like those in video, imaging, CAD, GIS type work, VMs, etc. can see performance increases with higher frequencies. You can also see where it takes longer with reduced amounts of DRAM. As mentioned, these differences don't look drastic, but as an example, the difference between 2400 and 1600 DRAM here runs into about a 30-second difference in roughly 5 minutes, which is about 6 minutes per hour in time savings or about 45 minutes in a workday. Doing DRAM-intensive work all day, you would come close to doubling that savings by going from 8GB to 32GB. 

Geekbench 3.2.2 Pro

Geekbench, using the overall scoring for both single- and multi-core scoring:

Again, I got mixed results. I was really hoping for something definitive, but the numbers were all over.  The following results are basically overall recaps I used to evaluate the individual sets of sticks, but I thought some people might find the results interesting. And again, I promised to keep the chart count down.

Latency And Bandwidth

I used AIDA64 Engineer Edition to test DRAM latency as well as read/write scores. Again, the results varied, and I promised to keep charts to a minimum. So, to recap the scores:

Aggregated Memory

Si-Sandra was used to get an Aggregated Memory Score in MB/s

PassMark Performance

The PassMark Performance Test was used to provide scores for a Composite Memory score from all the tests, as well as what they call a Database Operations score:

Next, we'll look at the scores from the Intel side of the testing and compare. Then, we will head into what I found to be the most interesting.