Performance Test Configuration

The Mushkin Redline XP4000 was tested with the DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR Athlon 64 Socket 939 motherboard. The DFI nForce4 SLI and Ultra are the only current production boards that support the 3.3V to 3.5V rated voltages required for Redline DDR500 performance. An OCZ DDR Booster can be used with motherboards without support for high memory voltages. Other components remain the same as used in the memory setup in Athlon 64 Memory: Rewriting the Rules.

The A64 test bed includes components that have been proven in Socket 939 Athlon 64 benchmarking, such as the Socket 939 4000+, and the OCZ Power Stream 520 Power Supply. Since the Athlon 64 tests represent a new series of DDR testing, we have chosen the current generation NVIDIA 6800 Ultra video card for benchmarking. We have found the 6800 Ultra to be a particularly good performance match to NVIDIA motherboards.

All other basic test conditions attempted to mirror those used in our earlier Intel memory reviews. However, test results are not directly comparable to tests performed on the Intel test bed.

 AMD nForce4 Performance Test Configuration
Processor(s): AMD 4000+ (FX53) Athlon 64
(2.4GHz, Socket 939, 1 MB cache, Dual Channel, 1000HT)
RAM: Mushkin Redline XP4000 (DS) 2X512MB
Kingston KVR400X64C25/512 (DS) 2X512MB
Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/1G (DS) 2X512MB
Mushkin PC3200 EM (DS) 2X512MB
OCZ PC3200 Value Series (VX) (DS) 2X512MB
OCZ PC3200 Gold (BH5) (DS) 2X512MB
OCZ PC3200 Premier (DS) 2X512MB
Transcend JM366D643A-50 (DS) 2X512MB
Patriot PC3200+XLBT (DS) 2X512MB
OCZ EL PC4000 VX Gold (DS) 2X512MB
Corsair TwinX1024-4400C25 (DS) 2X512MB
Crucial Ballistix (DS) 2X512MB
OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev 2 (DS) 2X512MB
Hard Drives: Seagate 120GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB Cache
PCI/AGP Speed: Fixed at 33/66
Bus Master Drivers: NVIDIA nForce Platform Driver 6.53
Video Card(s): NVIDIA 6800 Ultra 256MB PCIe, 256MB aperture, 1024x768x32
Video Drivers: NVIDIA Forceware 71.89 Release
Power Supply: OCZ Power Stream 520W
Operating System(s): Windows XP Professional SP2
Motherboard: DFI LANParty nF4 SLI-DR
BIOS: 3/10/2005 Release

In past benchmarking, we have found performance of the nForce4 and nForce3 chipsets to be virtually identical, and we have found AGP and PCIe performance to be virtually the same in the benchmarks that we use for memory testing. Therefore, you can also generally compare these results to TCCD benchmarks in recent memory reviews.

With nForce3 motherboards, the fastest performance on AMD Athlon 64 was at a Cycle Time or tRAS of 10. However, the nForce4 behave a bit differently with memory. We ran a complete set of Memtest86 benchmarks with only tRAS varied to determine the best tRAS setting for these memories, and found the best bandwidth at tRAS settings ranging from 5 to 8. Therefore, a tRAS setting of 6 was used for testing.

Test Settings

All AMD Athlon 64 processors are unlocked downward, and the FX CPUs are unlocked up and down. This feature allows a different approach to memory testing, which truly measures performance differences in memory speed alone. All tests were run with CPU speed as close to the specified 2.4GHz of the 4000+/FX53 as possible, with CPU speed/Memory Speed increased at lower multipliers to achieve 2.4Ghz. This approach allows the true measurement of the impact of higher memory speed and timings on performance, since CPU speed is fixed, thereby removing CPU speed as a factor in memory performance.

The following settings were tested with the Mushkin Redline XP4000 on the DFI nF4 test bed:
  1. 2.4GHz-12x200/DDR400 - the highest stock memory speed supported on VIA 939/nF3-4/SiS755-FX motherboards
  2. 2.4GHz-11x218/DDR436 - a ratio near the standard DDR433 speed
  3. 2.4GHz-10x240/DDR480 - a ratio near the standard rating of DDR466
  4. 2.4GHz -9x267/DDR533 - a memory speed achieved by only a few top memories on the Athlon 64
  5. Highest Memory Performance - the highest memory bandwidth and game performance that we could achieve with the memory being tested; this is rarely the highest memory speed that we could achieve. It is normally a lower speed with 1T Command Rate and tighter memory timings.
Command Rate is not normally a factor in Intel DDR tests, but it is a major concern in Athlon 64 performance. A Command Rate of 1T is considerably faster on Athlon 64 than a 2T Command Rate. For this reason, all testing was at 1T Command Rate. Command Rate and voltage are reported for each memory speed setting.

We ran our standard suite of memory performance benchmarks: Quake 3, Return to Castle Wolfenstein-Enemy Territory-Radar, Super Pi 2M, and Sandra 2004 Standard and UnBuffered. We also included Everest Home Edition memory tests, free at www.lavalys.com, for read speed, write speed, and Latency.

Mushkin Redline XP4000 Test Results: Mushkin Redline XP4000
Comments Locked

41 Comments

View All Comments

  • Joepublic2 - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link

    #30, I don't know. You could probably get an anwser if you asked at http://mersenneforum.org/.
  • fitten - Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - link

    #29 Is it exhaustive? Does it check for the 'bad' values for sin, cos, tan, atan, div, sqrt, etc? Or does it just check against the operations and data required for Prime95 to do its thing?
  • Joepublic2 - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    #28, prime95 explicitly tests for rounding errors of the nature you described. It ensures that all 80 bits of the floating point value that are returned are equal to the precalculated value in the program's database.
  • fitten - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    #20 and #26, yes, those programs can give you *some* sense of security but neither are exhaustive tests. As #26 says, even parts running at their rated/spec'd speed can have problems that just weren't detected by the manufacturor (but this is really rare). You don't necessarily need registered modules, btw... just ECC ones. Registered modules deal with other problems (having enough drive on the bus to operate the modules properly, for example).

    As far as returning bad results, some errors can be purely data related. An oversimplified example is that the CPU adds 2+2 and gets 5 (not that this particular example will happen, but there are circuit timings inside the CPU that are data related). Odds are, if you are playing a game, the screen gets a pixel the wrong color or some geometry isn't quite right for a frame but both are too fast to notice. Just remember that 'distance' is the operating parameter of the CPU clock speed. The longest path through the CPU (in a clock driven circuit - which most CPUs are) determines the maximum clock speed. Only one path through one pipeline stage in the whole CPU has to be too long to run at your overclocked speed for the thing to be unstable when that one data+execution occurs.

    Anyway, to each his own. Overclock if it gives you pleasure, just don't recommend it as something for someone else to do without giving plenty of disclaimers about it. As I said before, I used to overclock everything but then I decided it really wasn't worth it. Bragging rights just became a non-issue for me and if I needed a faster CPU that bad, I could just buy it and not have to worry about it (nearly as much).
  • Zebo - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    I wonder if they'll sued by redline? I used to have redline bikes as a kid.
    http://www.redlinebicycles.com/
  • PrinceGaz - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    #17- if stability is paramount to you, then you should be using a system with registered parity memory modules as they pretty much guarantee you won't get any errors from them. That's why they are almost invariably used by businesses in mission-critical servers. Anyone who uses unbuffered non-parity modules runs the risk of data corruption very occasionally even if they don't overclock.

    Myself, I've used unbuffered non-parity modules for many years because they're cheaper and faster and as far as I know they have never caused me any problems, apart from an incident last year when a memory stick went bad and corrupted lots of important data before the system crashed with a by then all but unrecoverable hard-drive. I hope it won't happen again as it was a nightmare at the time, and I wasn't even overvolting the module (a stick of Crucial/Micron) which went bad.

    The only way to be truly safe is with registered parity modules.
  • Zebo - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    Ballistix is better than TCCD under 255Mhz.. TCCD above that. IMO both are more desirable in that they run low volts any mobo can push.

    If you want to talk about discount UTT this is where its at: http://shop2.outpost.com/product/4292564

    Only $60 a stick. See here for performance.
    http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
  • xsilver - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    zebo's comments are VERY pertinent, also consider
    ocz value vx (OCZ4001024WV3DC-K) can still be tempting, considering almost half the price -- the dfi is also a must as most people haven't tested limits of it using max voltage levels of other boards (2.8v?)

    also are ballistix cheaper than any available TCCD's ?? -- are ballistix > TCCD or TCCD > Ballistix ??
  • Zebo - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    In all fairness Barkuti, he is testing the memory max capabilites at the highend which is impossible to do w/o some processor variance due to memory variations. i.e. all memory clocks to different levels.

    But in general I agree it paints a picture of highend ram as a "have to have" to realize these performance increases when in fact processor speed is playing a more signifigant part.
  • Barkuti - Monday, May 16, 2005 - link

    Nice memory review Wesley. However, there's something "flawed" on it, like in all past memory reviews.

    Your measurements for highest CPU/memory performance aren't done right, because you should try to minimize CPU/LDT clockspeed differences between the tested memory platforms - I mean, use the damn memory dividers. There's still a lot of misinformed people about the issue, but you should all know, THERE'S NO PERFORMANCE PENALTY FOR USING MEMORY DIVIDERS ON Athlon 64.

    For example, on your past "OCZ VX Revisited: DDR Updates on DFI nForce4" memory review, you settled for 318 MHz on OCZ PC3200 Platinum Rev. 2 modules. At 9x multiplier ratio (1:1 LDT/MEM), that translates into approximately 2862 MHz CPU clockspeed. That was compared to 10x267 MHz for the 4000 VX Gold, which translates into a much lower value of 2670 MHz CPU clockspeed. Despite the incredible disadvantage the VX memory still got a superb result.
    But if you had used some dividers to equalize CPU clockspeed, you could have set, assuming 2862 MHz as the absolute top clockspeed for the CPU, the same LDT frecuency and CPU multiplier for the VX modules, and a RAM divider of 5/6; that would have translated into 265 MHz RAM clockspeed, close enough to the max.
    The combination of increases in CPU and LDT clockspeeds would have rendered a noticeable increase in top performance for the VX platform, leaving TCCD memory in the dust.

    A retest for the not that high clockspeed modules would be nice.

    Cheers

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now