INTEL - Synchronous is not important

[sman789]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Ah....one of my favorite subjects. I was away this week and dont have the time to read through all of this, but a few basic points about 1:1 vs a ratio:

1) Dont limit your CPU speed just to run 1:1 ratio. CPU MHz will gain you much more performance than mem speed will. CPU speed 1st, mem speed 2nd.

2) Dont waste your time with synthetic mem benches like SiSoft, Aida, etc. They dont translate into real world performance. This includes unbuffered tests. I've seen plenty of 20 - 30% gain SiSoft benches that show less than 1% gain or even a loss in real world performance.

3) A lot depends on the memory you use. The so called "PC3700 - 4000" ram being sold runs with very relaxed timings. A setup running 250 FSB 1:1 DDR 500 3-4-4-8 is no faster (very likely slower) than a system running 250 FSB 5:4 DDR 400 2-2-2-6. High DDR speed with relaxed timings is ~= to lower DDR speed with tight timings. If you buy the relaxed timing stuff, you cant use tight timings even if you run a ratio. You are stuck.

4) That tRas to 11 thing does not apply to Intel setups.

ahh the old one with the knowledge....i'm happy now that i bought 3200 with semi tight timings...2-3-3-6
(seen better timings with the same ram tho)

 

[StraightPipe]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

Originally posted by: Dead Parrot Sketch
Stevejst- I agree with your conclusions pretty much. For instance my system is using cheap Samsung pc2700 ram and a 3:2 ratio, but because it's running at 280fsb it gets benchmark scores better than a stock 3.2g system using a 1:1 ratio and pc3200.

And it's a helluva lot cheaper.

A 3.36 Ghz processor is faster than a 3.2 Ghz processor... imagine that.

I think that this is the bottom line, so if your ram can handle it, kick up that ratio

 

[Jeff7181]

Wow... lots of stuff going on here since the power went out. Went out in the middle of my testing with a 233 Mhz FSB... but I've lost interested in this thread, so I don't think I'm gonna bother finding out where I left off to continue... I got a free three year old Compaq this weekend with a 17 inch monitor that I'm gonna work on getting up and running. Needs a new hard drive... lots of bad sectors... repair them, and a couple hours later, more bad sectors show up. Soooooo... I'm gonna see what I can do about Compaq's warranty... and hopefully get a new restore disc too since the origional owner only could find the boot CD to start the recovery utility, and some moron deleted the factor reinstall crap on the hard drive.

 

[mechBgon]

I'm not going to read four pages of this stuff. Did he ever run any UT2003 Botmatch benchies? Because I don't buy computers to run synthetic benchmarks on them... I buy them to do actual real-life things with them. Time for some real-world benchies, and here's one of mine:

• Defrag your hard drive, then make a New Folder on it
• Install WinZip 8.1 if you don't have it already
• Copy the contents of Unreal Tournament Disc 1 (original edition) to the New Folder
• Right-click the New Folder > WinZip > Add to Zip File...
• Set the compression to Maximum (slowest) and begin timing as you click Add
• Stop timing when the progress bar disappears and report your time here.

For maximum accuracy, I'd suggest doing the compression part of the benchmark right after booting up, so the data isn't partially or completely cached in system memory.

Contrary to popular knee-jerk reaction, this isn't a HDD benchmark. It's dependent on the CPU/northbridge/memory love triangle. I do have a truly-hellacious real-world HDD benchie, and if I ever get a WD Raptor to kick around, I'll do a report of how it stacks up to my Cheetah X15-36LP and my Cheetah 15k.3.

 

[Jeff7181]

mech... what's the HD benchmark? I have a Raptor... if I'm bored sometime I might do it =)

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
mech... what's the HD benchmark? I have a Raptor... if I'm bored sometime I might do it =)

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
mech... what's the HD benchmark? I have a Raptor... if I'm bored sometime I might do it =)

Do you have Office2000 Professional CDs? Because the procedure is this, which I've set up a batchfile to do:

• Run a 500MB self-extracting .exe that creates C:\Toolbox on your hard drive, with the necessary patch files for the following procedures, among other things
• Start the batchfile, which begins by copying the contents of your Office2000 Professional disc 1 and disc 2 CDs onto the hard drive. The following steps are all done by the batchfile:
  
• Run setup.exe /a for Office2000Pro Disc 1 to create an Administrative Installation Point out of it
• Do likewise for Disc 2
• Run a freaky command that applies Service Pack 1A to the Disc 1 A.I.P
• Do likewise for the Disc 2 A.I.P.
• Run another freaky command that applies Service Pack 3 over the top of SP1A on the Disc 1 A.I.P.
• Copy the \IE5 and \Support folders from the SP3-level Disc 1 A.I.P to the Disc 2 A.I.P.
• Run yet another freaky command that applies SP3 over the top of SP1A on the Disc 2 A.I.P.
• Run a final command that applies the post-SP3 Outlook2000 patch to the Disc 1 A.I.P.

I was doing this at work on my Cheetah X15-36LP, trying to get it all debugged so I could send it out to other offices in our agency. I brought home a 15GB Maxtor 5400rpm IDE drive to do some testing/development at home, and it was then that I began to appreciate the Cheetah X15-36LP... I seriously thought at one point that the system had hung, but it was just the Maxtor being a mild-mannered 5400rpm drive. Extremely quiet, and extremely slow :|

All told, during this procedure, the user has to enter the CD keys for the CDs at about five different places, so I'd have to stop the stopwatch for the user-interactive parts... but it would still amount to about ten minutes of heavy HDD work on a fairly fast drive, I'd guess. My Cheetah 15k.3 should arrive tomorrow and I'm planning to do some comparisons later this week

 

[Jeff7181]

Too much work =)

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Too much work =)

LOL, tell me about it

 

[stevejst]

Back to original argument:
Check the Technut thread about Pentium 2.6C at 3.5GHz running asynchronous 5:4 using 270 FSB and 216x2 memory.
I know that is real because I have this memory and I know what it can do. He posted pictures of his setup.

Touch that with 2.6C on any synchronous setup with any memory if you can!

 

[Jeff7181]

Grass is green and the sky is blue.