SuperPi 1.5 8M Performance-
9x400FSB 3600MHz 7-7-7-24 1T 1066 Strap DDR3-1600
8x450FSB 3600MHz 8-8-8-24 2T 1066 Strap DDR3-1800
We decided to throw in a couple of SuperPi 8M results at 9x400 and 8x450 for those of you who utilize this program for performance tuning. We will have full 32M results shortly.
Ouick Thoughts
ASUS has provided us an early peek at some of their planned improvements for the P5K series of motherboards that include the ability to manipulate the memory straps and greatly increase the range of 1T performance with the proper memory choice on the DDR3 product. However, we are hesitant at this time to provide full application results with this beta BIOS. Since this is a beta BIOS we found a few quirks during testing such as the BIOS setting the PCIe link speed to x2 or x4 speeds at certain FSB and memory strap settings.
The main reason is that chipset latencies have not been tuned properly yet when changing the memory straps. The type of performance advantages we have seen on boards such as the Intel BadAxe 2 975X and DFI Infinity P965-S when pushing the memory straps at high FSB speeds is not present in this BIOS release yet. This does not mean there are not any performance advantages but at this time we only noticed a difference of around 2% between each strap setting when reaching the maximum FSB point when a strap change is required. As it stands now, setting the Transaction Booster option to enabled and 1 generally provides the biggest performance advantage on this board along with maximizing memory timings.
The most impressive aspect we have noticed is the ability to run 1T timings up to DDR3-1860 in dual channel mode with the Micron IC based modules. In internal testing we have noticed improvements of up to 4% in memory sensitive applications at this time. The average range being around 2% but every little bit helps when trying to maximize the performance on a $300 motherboard. Overall, we believe ASUS is taking a step in the right direction and we look forward to bringing you full test results on the DDR2 and DDR3 motherboards once the BIOS is ready for release.
9x400FSB 3600MHz 7-7-7-24 1T 1066 Strap DDR3-1600
8x450FSB 3600MHz 8-8-8-24 2T 1066 Strap DDR3-1800
We decided to throw in a couple of SuperPi 8M results at 9x400 and 8x450 for those of you who utilize this program for performance tuning. We will have full 32M results shortly.
Ouick Thoughts
ASUS has provided us an early peek at some of their planned improvements for the P5K series of motherboards that include the ability to manipulate the memory straps and greatly increase the range of 1T performance with the proper memory choice on the DDR3 product. However, we are hesitant at this time to provide full application results with this beta BIOS. Since this is a beta BIOS we found a few quirks during testing such as the BIOS setting the PCIe link speed to x2 or x4 speeds at certain FSB and memory strap settings.
The main reason is that chipset latencies have not been tuned properly yet when changing the memory straps. The type of performance advantages we have seen on boards such as the Intel BadAxe 2 975X and DFI Infinity P965-S when pushing the memory straps at high FSB speeds is not present in this BIOS release yet. This does not mean there are not any performance advantages but at this time we only noticed a difference of around 2% between each strap setting when reaching the maximum FSB point when a strap change is required. As it stands now, setting the Transaction Booster option to enabled and 1 generally provides the biggest performance advantage on this board along with maximizing memory timings.
The most impressive aspect we have noticed is the ability to run 1T timings up to DDR3-1860 in dual channel mode with the Micron IC based modules. In internal testing we have noticed improvements of up to 4% in memory sensitive applications at this time. The average range being around 2% but every little bit helps when trying to maximize the performance on a $300 motherboard. Overall, we believe ASUS is taking a step in the right direction and we look forward to bringing you full test results on the DDR2 and DDR3 motherboards once the BIOS is ready for release.
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anandtech02148 - Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - link
what am to going to do with my 7gigs of ddr2 800mhz.It was a nice fire sale this season,.. the promises of vista,direct 10 games, anyone want to trade 7gigs of ddr2 for 2gigs of ddr3 when all the promises matured?
ViRGE - Monday, June 18, 2007 - link
DDR3 is going to have a really hard time taking off if the memory consortium doesn't manage to push out some good 2GB sticks soon. At this point 4GB is about to become the norm for a high-end system and 4 1GB sticks leaves no room for future expansion plus invites any problems/slowdowns that happens with 4 sticks over 2 sticks. The sweet spot needs to be 2GB sticks so that high-end computers build with DDR3 can use a 2x2GB configuration and leave the other 2 slots open for another 2x2GB set when said system gets upgraded in a couple of years.BigLan - Monday, June 18, 2007 - link
I don't really think that 2gb sticks is going to help ddr3 much, but I agree that it's going to have a hard time taking off. I actually think it'll take much longer for ddr3 to catch on than ddr2 did, which was helped enormously by Intel's chipsets only supporting ddr2 which forced dell and the big oems to transition early and helped the overall adoption rate (though AMD still stuck with DDR1 for a long time.)This time around, oems don't really have a reason to transition so will likely stay with the cheaper product for longer.
Having said that, Intel has a much bigger incentive to push ddr3 this time than they did with ddr2. AMD showed that they could not move their chips to ddr2 easily because they have to rework the memory controller and the same is likely to be true this time around. I think an early push by intel to dd3 would help them keep the performance crown for a long time.
TA152H - Monday, June 18, 2007 - link
Are you sure AMD couldn't move to DDR2? Seeing as how DDR performed as well, was there really any point to it? Originally AMD said they would go straight to DDR3 and skip DDR2, so I think it was more of a choice. Also, the memory controller on the K8 isn't designed well for DDR2, whereas the Barcelona has deeper request and response ques, so should take better advantage of DDR2. It looks like AMD changed their minds in the middle, which was probably a mistake and a waste of design resources since DDR2 pretty much sucks, at least for the K8.DDR3 should take off because it's clearly better than DDR2, and it's essentially no more difficult to make. The price will drop quickly and for whatever reason people have everything backwards. Supply/demand says that if demand is too high, price goes up, not down. So what the heck is everyone talking about? That demand will be moderate and growing should help, since every memory company knows they need to make DDR3 since it will take over, but demand isn't crazy immediately so they have time to get it right and ramp production.
wolfman3k5 - Monday, June 18, 2007 - link
When will you guys review the Abit IP35 motherboard? It's supposed to be pretty cool.TA152H - Monday, June 18, 2007 - link
Any idea why Everest is showing faster L2 cache speeds with higher FSB speeds? Seems to me Everest is rubbish and shouldn't be used if you can't trust the results, but maybe I'm missing something (although I can't imagine how, the L2 cache shouldn't care about the FSB). Is it just bad software or is there something I haven't thought of?