What's faster - DDR RAM running 1T @ 200Mhz vs 2T @ 300Mhz?

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Mysterae

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Sep 11, 2005
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I posted this question inside another thread, but it fell on deaf ears. So I'm asking the wider motherboard audience:

What would offer the best performance for games etc: running a motherboard with 2x 1GB at 1T and a clockspeed of around 200 (so DDR400?) versus the same ram but at 2T and a clockspeed of 300 (DDR600?). I don't have the hardware to test for myself.

Looking at it like that makes me think the higher clockspeed @ 2T would be best.
 
id caution to say 300mhz at 2T. what kind of timings are we looking at in both cases?
 
If all other timings are kept the same 300 @2T will be FAR FASTER.

The big hoo hah about the loss in performance going from 1t to 2t is just that. If one actually does some benchmarks in games, and all timings are the same except for 1t vs 2t, the performance loss using 2t will be very minor, say around 5%-7%. But since running 2t usually allows other timings to be tighter performance loss is basically nil.

In my system I tested TCCD at 2,2,2,5 @200 1t and at 2t and there was a small hit using 2t. But I could scale up to 300 using these timings, 3,4,3,8 2t.

Long story short, use Everest to test memory bandwith. Whatever gives you more bytes per second is what I would go with.
 
I would also say 300 @ 2T however I am a sucker for tight timings. I would rather run as tight timings as possible.
 
No need for bets. 300 @ 2T has much higher bandwidth. Around the 250-260MHz mark the 2T has higher performance than 1T at 200MHz (for AMD A64 processors only).
 
Thanks guys!

What sparked this thought was the review by Anandtech of the DFI LanParty RDX200 motherboard, where the reviewer was making a hooha about the boards ability to run 4 DIMMs @ 1T. But with 4 DIMMS @ 1T, the FSB is limited to around 203Mhz.

The board was benched @:

- 2940Mhz (245x12, 4x HT ?T and no. DIMMs unknown)
- 2718Mhz (305 x 9, 3x HT, 1T using 2 DIMMs).

Then the processor was changed and the board tested with 4 DIMMs @ 1T, 4 DIMMs @ 2T and then 2 DIMMs @ 1T. The 4 DIMMs @ 1T won the test by 1,000 AquaMark3 points over the 2 1T DIMMs. I presume he didn't overclock the 2 DIMMS @ 1T to compare it for this test, as it would have been faster and take the focus off the 4 DIMMs @ 1T :rolleyes: But of course, not everyone overclocks.

So perhaps I should change my question to a hypothetical one, as I wouldn't kit this board with 4 1GB DIMMs, unless for an upgrade in the future:

What's better, 4 x 1GB DIMMs @ 1T 203Mhz, or 4 x 1GB DIMMs @ 2T 300Mhz. Same answer probably!

Kinda takes the shine off this board a little; if your overclocking it or only using 2 DIMMs, the 1T with 4 DIMMs feature is superfluos so it would seem. Good looking board none the less.
 
Mysterae said:
...What's better, 4 x 1GB DIMMs @ 1T 203Mhz, or 4 x 1GB DIMMs @ 2T 300Mhz. Same answer probably!...
Click to expand...
I would say 2T at 300MHz, except for two problems.
1) Have you seen any gig sticks that can run DDR600? If you have, please let me know! :p
2) Windows XP (32-bit, anyway) doesn't recognize the full 4GB of RAM. Depending on the motherboard/BIOS, I believe most configurations will only turn up 3.5GB.

A different story is 4x512MB, which will let you hit DDR600 with relative ease, and is probably cheaper than 2x1GB for most setups.
 
mavalpha said:
I would say 2T at 300MHz, except for two problems.
1) Have you seen any gig sticks that can run DDR600? If you have, please let me know! :p
2) Windows XP (32-bit, anyway) doesn't recognize the full 4GB of RAM. Depending on the motherboard/BIOS, I believe most configurations will only turn up 3.5GB.

A different story is 4x512MB, which will let you hit DDR600 with relative ease, and is probably cheaper than 2x1GB for most setups.
Click to expand...

Mavalpha said it rather well. But there are a few select 1 gig sticks out there that will do DDR600.

1) I have seen several Crucial Ballistix, OCZ and Geil 1 gig sticks run at or very close to ddr600.
2) Good ole DFI has an option in their bios to allow the full 4gigs of ram to be "seen" by windows. EDIT: Did some more research and it appears windows xp with SP2 installed will not allow all 4 gigs of memory to be used. 4 gigs is fine with SP1 though. Stinking Microsoft...

Keep in mind that the Athlon 64 is so efficient with memory, most users simply will not notice low latency / high latency differences.
 
Crucial Ballistix Z503 1GB modules reaches 300MHz w/ 3-3-3-8 timings @ 2.9v.
 
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