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Test Setup

For the sake of the argument, we will confine ourselves to the P4 platform. On a side note, though, it is well documented in the manual of e.g. the ASUS K8V that certain constellations of the DIMM slot population with memory will automatically result in throttling of the memory operating frequency. Keep in mind that this is bank sensors at work and has a priori nothing to do with the amount of system memory, the connection here is coincidental only.

SiSoft Sandra

As a sanity check, it is always good to run some known benchmark, regardless of how relevant or not it may be. We were running SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth benchmark with buffering and block prefetching both enabled and disabled.

Red bars: 2 GB total, gray bars: 1 GB total system memory: The results were predictable, with buffering enabled, the overall bandwidth takes a minor hit when migrating to the higher system memory configuration. On the contrary, the additional pages that can be kept open pay off when buffering is disabled, as was shown quite elegantly by Wesley Fink in a recent review on AnandTech.

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