MrRevhead

After seeing all you guys jump on the Core 2 Duo bandwagon, temptation got the better of me and I couldn't help but join in on the fun.

I initially was not planning on another upgrade till later this year as I have been concentrating on one of my car projects. Last week the opportunity arose for me to purchase a E6600ES to go with some D9GCT sticks I also recently acquired.

I was a little confused as to which motherboard to get, with the DS3P v3.3 being considered due mainly for its bang for buck. But a previous bad experience with a Gigabyte board in the past made me think twice. I then considered the DFI 975x/g, Intel Bad Axe 2, Asus Commando & P5N32E-SLI, but wanting a board pretty much the same day as I purchased the CPU meant I only had a choice as to what some retailers had in stock. I opted for the tried and tested P5B Deluxe non-WiFi edition thanks to some advice from our good mate Alpha . I still yern for a BX2 or P5N32E, but that maybe on the cards sometime a little later.

Now on to the business end.

All tests will be done on my main computer. That means, all hardware set-up within an enclosed case with an untweaked version of Windows XP + SP2 installed.


System Set-up

CPU: Intel E6600ES (Step 5 B1) QPGE L617A
Motherboard: ASUS P5B Deluxe (Rev 1.04g)
Ram: 4 x 512MB Micron D9GCT (OEM)
Cooling: Thermaltake Big Typhoon (Original)
Storage: Seagate 300GB SATA II 7200.9
Graphics: Gigabyte 6800GS
PSU: Antec True Power II 480W
Enclosure: Antec P160W
Additional Cooling: 120mm Antec Tricool Fans (auto speed adjusting - 1 x Intake, 1 x Exhaust)



Default Tests

I thought I would include some runs on default settings (both CPU & RAM) to set a base line for testing.

Basic BIOS Settings: (Untweaked/Default RAM)
2.4Ghz

1M



32M



I thought I would leave the RAM settings on default but raise the clock to set some base lines for higher clock rates.

3.2Ghz

1M



3.6Ghz

1M




8M



32M

MrRevhead

CAS 3 vs CAS 4 Tests

3.6Ghz

VDIMM: 2.35v

3-3-3-9 9 x 400mhz (1:1)

1M



16M



4-4-4-10 9 x 400mhz (1:1)

1M



16M



Observations

• The P965 chipset does not like tight timings (aka CAS 3) and responds better to CAS 4 RAM timings
• 4-4-4-10 offers on average 200MB/s greater memory read bandwidth compared to 3-3-3-9
• Memory Write & Copy speeds/thoroughput are more or less the same between CAS 3 & CAS 4 with P965
• 4-4-4-10 makes RAM have 8ns on average better latency compared to 3-3-3-9
• 4-4-4-10 reduced L2 Cache latency by 0.5ns compared to 3-3-3-9

As promised, I put some of the recommended timings by some of you guys to test. I left the majority of the subtimings though pretty much the same for consistency.

3.6Ghz

VDIMM: 2.35v
BIOS: 0804

3-4-3-10 (9 x 400mhz - 1:1)

1M



16M



3-4-4-10 (9 x 400mhz - 1:1)

1M



16M



4-4-3-10 (9 x 400mhz - 1:1)

1M



16M



Observations

• 3-4-4-10 offers the greatest Memory Read Bandwidth
• 3-4-4-10 offers the greatest Memory Copy Bandwidth
• 3-4-4-10 offers the lowest Memory latency
• 3-4-4-10 improves L2 Cache latency by 0.2ns
• 4-4-3-10 had the quickest 1M SuperPi time
• 3-4-3-10 had the quickest 16M SuperPi time

Next tests to come will be maxing out the RAM.

I have got the screenshots down to ~100kb each using PSP 7. I need to use layers, therefore Infranview was given a miss. I will eventually get to fixing the previous screenies.


5-5-5-15 @ 600mhz (2:3)



Quite impressed with the bandwidth considering the fairly relaxed timings. Jumped straight to 600mhz with CAS 5 without testing any lower frequency, (now thats confidence with these modules)


4-4-4-12 @ 537mhz (2:3)



Max SuperPi stable with 4 modules on 4-4-4-12. 540mhz boots into Windows, but crashes during SuperPi.


Results with the first 2 x 512MB pair:

4-4-4-12 @ 552mhz (2:3)



n.b Memset speed (mhz) reading is incorrect

Still to try the other 2 sticks.

MrRevhead

More results to come when I get some more free time

MrRevhead

Reserved #2

MrRevhead

Reserved #3

alpha0ne

Bring on the torture session

Is that board a C2 ???

eva2000

Yay nice to see more user adventure threads

You might want to read up on how to capture/post better optimised images at http://i4memory.com/f54/announcement-irfanview-com-freeware-nice-image-editor-updated.html

MrRevhead

No probs

I must admit, I kind of take for granted the speed of my internet connection at times