DDR4 Haswell-E Scaling Review: 2133 to 3200 with G.Skill, Corsair, ADATA and Crucial
by Ian Cutress on February 5, 2015 10:10 AM ESTSingle GTX 770 Gaming
The normal avenue for faster memory lies in integrated graphics solutions, but as Haswell-E does not have integrated graphics we are testing typical gaming scenarios using relatively high end graphics cards. First up is a single MSI GTX 770 Lightning in our Haswell-E system, running our benchmarks at 1080p and maximum settings. We take the average frame rates and minimum frame rates for each of our tests.
Dirt 3: Average FPS
Dirt 3: Minimum FPS
Bioshock Infinite: Average FPS
Bioshock Infinite: Minimum FPS
Tomb Raider: Average FPS
Tomb Raider: Minimum FPS
Sleeping Dogs: Average FPS
Sleeping Dogs: Minimum FPS
Conclusions at 1080p/Max with a GTX 770
The only real deficit observed throughout our testing is the DDR4-2133 C15 4x4GB kit dropping down to 121 FPS in F1 2013 from a 126 FPS average from the other kits, resulting in a less-than 5% drop by choosing the default JEDEC kit in the 4x4 configuration. Moving up to the 4x8 and 8x8 produces 125 FPS, but anything above 2133 C15 gets around the top result from 125-127.
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dgingeri - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Really, what applications use this bandwidth now?I'm the admin of a server software test lab, and we've been forced to move to the Xeon E5 v3 platform for some of our software, and it isn't seeing any enhancement from DDR4 either. These are machines and software using 256GB of memory at a time. The steps from Xeon E5 and DDR3 1066 to E5 v2 and DDR3 1333 and then up to the E5 v3 and DDR4 2133 are showing no value whatsoever. We have a couple aspects with data dedup and throughput are processor intensive, and require a lot of memory, but the memory bandwidth doesn't show any enhancement. However, since Dell is EOLing their R720, under Intel's recommendation, we're stuck moving up to the new platform. So, it's driving up our costs with no increase in performance.
I would think that if anything would use memory bandwidth, it would be data dedup or storage software. What other apps would see any help from this?
Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Have you seen the reported reduction in power consumption? With 256GBs per machine, it sounds like you should be benefiting from the lower power draw(and lower cooling costs) of DDR4.Murloc - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
depending on the country and its energy prices, the expense to upgrade and the efficiency gains made, you may not even be able to recoup the costs, ever.From a green point of view it may be even worse due to embodied energy going to waste depending on what happens to the old server.
Mr Perfect - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
True, but if you have to buy DDR4 machines because the DDR3 ones are out of production(like the OP), then dropping power and cooling would be a neat side bonus.And now, just because I'm curios: If the max DDR4 DIMM is 8GB, and there's 256GB per server, then that's 32 DIMMs. 32 times 1 to 2 watts less a DIMM would be 32 to 64 watts less load on the PSU. If the PSU is 80% efficient, then that should be 38.4 to 76.8 watts less at the wall per machine. Not really spectacular, but then you've also got cooling. If the AC is 80% efficient, that would be 46.08 to 92.16 watts less power to the AC. So in total, the new DDR4 server would cost you (wall draw plus AC draw) 84.48 to 168.96 watts lower load per server versus the discontinued DDR3 ones. Not very exciting if you've only got a couple of them, but I could see large server farms benefiting.
Anyone know how to work out the KWh and resulting price from electric rates?
menting - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
100W for an hour straight = 0.1KWH. If you figure 10-20 cents per KWH, it's about 1-2 cents per hour for a 100W difference. That's comes to about $7-$14 per month in bills provided that 100W is consistent 24/7.menting - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
pattern recognition is one that comes to mind.Murloc - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
physical restraints of light speed? Isn't any minuscule parasitic capacitance way more speed limiting than that?menting - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
there's tons of limiting factors, with capacitance being one of those. But even if you take pains to optimize those, the one factor that nobody can get around is the speed of light.menting - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
i guess i should say speed of electricity in a conductive medium instead of speed of light.retrospooty - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Agreed if an app required high total bandwidth it would benefit.Now see if you can name a few that actually need that.