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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menting - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
simulation software, pattern recognition, anything that does a lot of data analysis and/or data transformation. Heck, whatever an SSD's BW is good for, high BW memory can also be good forretrospooty - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
Simulation and pat rec maybe, not that anyone uses it other than rare outliers... But Anything an SSD is good for? No, not at all. An SSD improves launch times for anything and everything from browsers to office apps, to graphic suite apps like Adobe CS to games. Everything that normal people do. HB ram improves almost zero for the vast majority of what people actually do with computers. Even what enthusiasts do.menting - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
"SSD improves launch times for anything and everything from browsers to office apps, to graphic suite apps like Adobe CS to games. Everything that normal people do". Exactly my point. Everything that normal people do. All that an SSD does is to provide faster storage (granted, it's non-dynamic storage, unlike DRAM) such that when a CPU can't find the data in the cache nor the DRAM, it can go to it for data. If you have enough DRAM, all these software can reside in DRAM (provided that power does not go out). Also, a smart algorithm will know what software you used before so it will keep some parts in memory so the next time you launch it it will be faster. And the speed that it can relaunch will heavily depend on DRAM BW.If you want to talk about rare outliers, people who are serious enough Adobe users or gamers who really get affected in a major way by using a SSD vs a traditional HD are rare outliers. I won't be surprised if the number of those people are on par or lower than people that use simulation software or pattern recognition software.
BTW, if memory BW doesn't make much of a difference, why do graphic cards go for GDDRx instead of plain DDRx?
retrospooty - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
"BTW, if memory BW doesn't make much of a difference, why do graphic cards go for GDDRx instead of plain DDRx?"You are seriously clouding the issue here. With a graphics card assuming you are utilizing it with a modern 3d game or such, would benefit immensely from memory bandwidth on the card... It hardly benefits at all from system RAM bandwidth. Like everything, memory bandwidth doubling while timing/latency more than doubles doesn't improve system performance much at all. Some cases ahve it diminishing performance. This is NOT about Video RAM, its system RAM and based on the Intel CPU architecture for the past 15+ years, improving memory bandwidth at the cost of latency doesn't help much...
AGAIN, as I said in my original post - "We saw almost no improvement going from DDR400 cas2 to DDR3-1600 CAS10 now the same to DDR4 3000+ CAS [rediculous]
menting - Tuesday, February 10, 2015 - link
if you just want to talk about system RAM, the biggest blame is on software and CPU architecture, since with the exception of a few, are not optimized to take advantage of BW, only latency, even when the usage condition is ripe for doing so.retrospooty - Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - link
This is an article about system RAM. Why would anyone be talking about video RAM? Agreed, it is a CPU architecture issue, however this is the world we live in and this is the CPU architecture we have... Intel is pretty much the top of the heap.FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
Don't worry there are endless thousands of bonerheads who cannot wait to be "sporting" DDR4.For most, if they are made to think it should be faster, it is, no matter what occurs in reality.
I'd say 75% of it is how happy hyped their mental attitude is about how awesome their new bonerhead equipment is marketed to be, including any errors and rumors about what it is they actually purchased and installed, which they in many cases are not clear on.
xTRICKYxx - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
This would be an interesting topic to return to when DDR4 becomes mainstream with higher speeds.WaitingForNehalem - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Now this is an excellent article. Thank you!ExarKun333 - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
AMAZING article! Been waiting for this! :)