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| AMD Athlon64 3200+ - ASUS K8V Deluxe The Middle Grounds | |
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(Review by MS, November 3, 2003) |
| K8V Deluxe At: |
Memory Compatibility
The integrated memory controller is somewhat problematic with respect to memory load. Using 2 x 256 MB Mushkin PC3200 Level II DIMMs, we did not experience any problems running at 2:2:2 settings. The situation was slightly different with 512 MB modules. With the original BIOS, the system was stable at 2:3:2 (tRCD=3), however, after upgrading to the latest beta (013) BIOS, we encountered some problems, in that the system would not do a soft reboot with 2 x 512 MB of memory in slots 1+2 or 1+3. Switching Off and On the power, solved the problem but this is not a generally viable solution either. Using a standard Shut-down, the system always initialized on a cold boot and we did not really find any stability problems either. Still, it appeared that the system was happier with 2 x 256 MB than with 2 x 512 MB or even 1 x 512 MB.
No Winbond CH-5
After flashing back to the currently latest 1002 production BIOS, all issues went away as long as we were using Level-II DIMMs (Winbond BH-5) however, there are still some compatibility problems we noted. The most drastic issue was that out of 10 DIMMs using Winbond CH-5 chips, not a single one would POST. This issue was common to both BIOS versions tested. BH-5 based DIMMs, on the other hand had no problems at all at least not with the production BIOS, regardless of whether we were running one or two 256MB or 512MB DIMMs at the most aggressive settings (256 MB: 2:2:2, 512MB: 2:3:2). The only issue in that respect to keep in mind is that even with BH-5 based DIMMs, it is necessary to set tRCD to 3 if 2 x 512 MB modules are being used. We found the best stability and performance at:
Unfortunately, the 1 GB DDR DIMMs we have are programmed as PC2100 and PC2700, therefore, we have not been able to try whether they would, in fact, run at DDR400 speed, or whether, irrespective of the capabilities of the controller, the chipset would enact a size-dependent frequency cap, in addition to using the bank sensors for throttling of the DRAM frequency.
Memory Performance
SiSoft Sandra
Because of the single channel memory controller, the Athlon64 will not be able to match the raw bandwidth of the FX series or the Opterons or even any P4 dual-channel memory configuration. On the other hand, turning off buffering and block prefetching only results in a minor hit in bandwidth.
Keep in mind that DDR400 is limited to 3200 MB/sec, in so far, the ~3165 MB/sec of the Athlon64 are even more impressive. However, keep in mind, too, that the default / lowest speed of the K8V is not 200 MHz external bus but an actual 205 MHz regardless of the turbo settings which raises the peak bandwidth to 3280 MB/sec. Overall, the bus utilization is still 96.5% which is the highest we have ever seen to this day.
With buffering disabled, we still got 2640/2645 MB/sec, which is quite extraordinary and probably the best testimony for the extreme efficacy of the low latency memory controller on the CPU itself.
next page: => Cachemem 2.65 =>
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