Intel Core 2 Duo: Memory Performance Part Deux

Application Performance

We decided to test some real world applications that typically stress the CPU, memory, and storage systems to see if the results from our synthetic memory tests carry over to the desktop. Based upon those results, our DDR2-533 memory settings should significantly outperform the DDR2-667 and DDR-333/400 configurations, while the DDR2-800 setting available on 965/975 should come in at the top of the performance charts.

Our tasks include three activities that are common on the desktop. Our first test was to measure the time it takes to shrink the entire Office Space DVD that was extracted with AnyDVD into a single 4.5GB DVD image utilizing Nero Recode 2. Our second test utilizes WinRAR 3.6 and measures the time it takes to compress our test folder that contains 444 files, 10 folders, and has 602MB of data.

Our third test consists of utilizing Exact Audio Copy as the front end for our version 3.98a3 of LAME. We set up EAC for variable bit rate encoding, burst mode for extraction, use external program for compression, and to start the external compressor upon extraction (EAC will read the next track while LAME is working on the previous track, thus removing a potential bottleneck with the optical drive). Our test CD is INXS Greatest Hits and contains 16 tracks totaling 606MB of songs. The results of our tests are presented in minutes/seconds with lower numbers being better.

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The results between our DDR355 settings on the Intel chipset and DDR400 on the VIA chipset are extremely close. If the i865 board was able to operate at a true DDR400 setting we are sure the results would have had a greater spread. Both of the DDR400 and DDR355 settings are very competitive with our DDR2 results, with DDR333 trailing behind.

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Unlike the synthetic results, the DDR2-667 results on the VIA PT880 Pro chipset outpace those of the DDR2-533 setting. The Biostar P965 board continues to outperform the other solutions although all results are close to each other. We see that our P965 DDR2-800 memory setting places first in all applications with the largest margin of victory being a 13 second advantage in the WinRAR test. Our DDR-355 results are impressive as they are competitive with the DDR2-533/667 configurations. The effects of the other platform components have basically negated the pure performance advantage of our DDR2 settings in the synthetic memory tests. While our DDR2-800 setting still offers the best overall performance, it would be difficult to tell the actual performance difference between it and our DDR-355 memory without benchmarks.