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Haswell And 1.35 V Memory: Three DDR3 SO-DIMM Kits, Tested

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When it comes to memory, most of our focus is on the desktop and its replaceable CPUs. The mobile side typically moves slower. But Intel's Haswell architecture imposes interesting changes, and we saw fit to test SO-DIMMs down at their new 1.35 V ceiling.

Results: Adobe Creative Suite

Our single-threaded Acrobat workload sees some benefit from faster memory. The Acrobat test also gains from the Core i7-4770K's higher thermal ceiling and larger shared L3 cache.

We typically disregard performance differences of one second or less, since rounding can exacerbate tiny deltas. We don’t see a consistent trend in memory performance in After Effects; we only know that maximum memory capacity plays a big role in how long this test takes to finish.

Data rate has no discernible effect on Photoshop’s CPU-heavy filters, but faster memory does help its OpenCL-accelerated performance. The LGA 1150-based Core i7-4770K is particularly limited by memory throughput.

Our Adobe Premiere Pro workload doesn't correlate clearly to memory performance. Instead, we end up with a five-second margin of error.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Jaroslav Jandek 13 January 2014 11:13
    It'll be more difficult to explain why the -4770R saw so much less benefit from higher data rates than the -4770K.
    The R version has 128MB of L4 cache. At 1280x720, it is large enough for all index and vertex buffers and most textures. That is why main memory speed doesn't significantly affect Iris Pro 5200...
    Reply
  • InvalidError 13 January 2014 12:14
    Having 128MB L4 cache certainly skews things around for IGP performance, no surprise there.
    Reply
  • mouse24 13 January 2014 12:40
    Huh, fairly surprised I didn't know about the 1.35v requirement. What happens if you pop in 1.5v in there? Is this just a power savings thing or did intel really mess with their memory controller for laptops?
    Reply
  • masmotors 13 January 2014 21:55
    i wonder how those 1866 would do on a newish amd apus 6800k
    Reply
  • Isaiah4110 13 January 2014 22:14
    Wow! I know this article is about memory, but the game benchmark data for Iris Pro actually impresses me quite a bit!
    Reply
  • airplanegeek 14 January 2014 03:50
    Intel really should've made socketed cpus with Iris Pro
    Reply
  • spartan117x2 14 January 2014 05:07
    so dimm..much intel..wow speed
    Reply
  • Crashman 14 January 2014 05:24
    12435372 said:
    Intel really should've made socketed cpus with Iris Pro
    Tell one of these companies that makes upgrade processors to solder the 4770R on an 1150 adapter :)

    Reply
  • zodiacfml 14 January 2014 07:19
    AMD must have been very envious with this Iris Pro having embedded 128MB of fast memory....which should be plenty useful for their AMD's APUs.
    Reply
  • de5_Roy 14 January 2014 10:28
    12436339 said:
    AMD must have been very envious with this Iris Pro having embedded 128MB of fast memory....which should be plenty useful for their AMD's APUs.
    intel claims that the edram costs around $80. that'd jack the a10 6800k price over $200 only to benefit the igpu (possibly the same with gddr5). imo, the weaker cpu cores wouldn't benefit much, if at all. that'd make the apus of poor value and people will argue against the apus claiming you can have a faster configuration under $200 (e.g. core i3 4110/fx6300 + radeon 7770/7750) without requiring the edram. as for core i7 4770R (and other R skus) - it's way too expensive. afaik, brix pro is barebones, the whole pc might cost near $800-1000 fully configured.
    Reply