AlexHopmann.com

Some more data is coming out on the real performance characteristics of DDR3 memory. The good news is that it looks like we are going to see some huge increases of memory bandwidth from the typical 800mhz today to 2000mhz soon (the over-clocking potential of some of the new memory is a good sign of what typical memory will do in 2 to 3 years).

The bad news is that as typical for high performance computing, the impact on overall system performance is still small. Computational/memory intensive benchmarks are showing a 2-3% improvement going from DDR2-800mhz to DDR3-1333mhz (which is the “normal” DDR3 speed now) and maybe 5% improvement from DDR2-800mhz to an over-clocked DDR3-2000mhz. I’m sure it would be different with a 5ghz processor or more likely if you are running 8-cores instead of the 2-cores they used for testing. This is one of those typical situations where performance improvements to one component only have a small impact unless that specific component is really holding back the rest of the system. Try comparing a 3ghz quad-core CPU with 400mhz memory vs 800mhz memory if you want to see a much more direct relationship between the memory speed and overall system performance.

Meanwhile, DDR3 memory is still psycho expensive on the range of $400 for 1gbx2, vs around $70 for the same 2gb in high quality DDR2-800 or maybe $130 if you want to get DDR2-1066 sticks (although the enthusiast sites suggest that most DDR2-800 chips run at DDR2-1066 easily).

The catch is you have to bet on a memory technology when you buy the motherboard and presumably within a year (and maybe much sooner) DDR3 will become mainstream and much more reasonable. Still considering that I’m interested in at least 4gb for my workstation, there is no way I’m paying an extra $700 for RAM. Also there is no such thing as 2gb DDR3 DIMMs so if I want 2gb on each stick (for future expansion room) I need to go with DDR2 anyway. 4gb (2×2gb) DDR2-800 is only about $160, or for $190 I can go for DDR2-1000. Since the newer Asus boards all officially support 1066mhz memory speeds that seems like a pretty safe bet to squeeze a little extra performance out for only a few extra $.

The other news out recently is that ATI should be shipping a new generation video board based on a die-shrink soon. The interesting aspect of this news for me is that they might have a new board out based on the RV670 that will have lower power consumption and only take up one slot for the cooler, not blocking the slots next to the video card, yet it will still have similar performance to the current top of the line Radeon HD 2900s. Of course on my workstation I don’t really have anything I was planning in putting in any of the other slots, but its nice to have the extra flexibility.