[G4] Another nail in the low memory latency coffin

[Philip J Robar]

A regular question on the lists that I frequent is whether or not it  
is worth seeking out low latency memory. Here's yet another review  
that definitively says that for most of us the answer is no:

"Although tighter memory timings and a 1T command rate can certainly  
improve the performance of the Athlon 64's memory subsystem, that  
improvement doesn't always translate to better application  
performance. In fact, with the exception of the Sphinx speech  
recognition engine, moving to tighter memory timings or a more  
aggressive command rate generally didn't improve performance by more  
than a few percentage points, if at all, in our tests. Lower  
latencies only improved WorldBench's overall score by a single point,  
and performance gains in games were generally limited to lower  
resolutions and detail levels.

So how much does the modest performance improvement brought by  
tighter memory latencies cost? Close to twice as much."

http://techreport.com/etc/2005q4/mem-latency/index.x?pg=1

As they explain in the article lower latency memory is useful for  
over clocking.


Phil
--
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