Memory scaling
On this page we decided to investigate a topic that often leaves a lot of confusion in the reader, that is how the performance change with varying type of memory installed. In this case, type refers to modules that differ in the operating frequency. For all three platforms (FX-8150, i7 2600K and i7 3960X) we decided to perform computational tests with memory set at the following frequencies and relative timings.
- 1333 MHz CL. 7-7-7-20 1T
- 1600 MHz CL. 8-8-8-22 1T
- 1866 MHz CL. 9-9-9-24 1T
- 2133 MHz CL. 10-10-10-26 1T
The reference software we primarily used was AIDA64, where we analyzed the bandwidth of read, write, copy and access times to memory. The second software is WinRar 4.01 (stable version), which typically can achieve good performance increase with faster memory. The last software we used is Cinebench R11.5, where we checked the score on the multi-core.
The second reference software is the known compression/decompression program WinRAR, where in effect for all architectures have shown increased performance rising the frequency of system memory. You can see below the graph we have achieved:
From the graph it is possible to deduce that for all the platforms we have the best results from using 2133 MHz memory, this is easily explained by the fact that WinRAR is a software which improves performance when you go to use the high frequency memories, which provide therefore a greater bandwidth. We note also that the AMD platform is less affected by this factor, in fact, going from a frequency of 1333 MHz at a frequency of 2133 MHz for the memory the increase is only 300 KB/s.
With Cinebench is clearly seen that the memories do not have any effect on the final result, in fact for all three platforms we have no substantive differences between using 1333 MHz memory and the use of memory at 2133 MHz.
