AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Review

Page 6 - Performance: Memory (Everest Ultimate 4.60)

Everest Ultimate

AMD are famed for their processor integrated memory controller, a thing Intel adopted very recently too in the Core i7. Now let's see how do things look like according to the memory tests of Lavasys Everest Ultimate software pack:

Results turned to be rather heterogeneous. As whole Phenom II 955 BE fares pretty well because of the fast DDR3 memory, but Core i7 is always on top, due the integrated triple channel controller. Interesting is the fact (that we must remind you of) that, Phenom X4 and Phenom II X4 can work with the memory in two modes. Those are "gaged" or "ungaged" mode. Since Phenom processors have two memory controllers, under Gaged mode both controllers have access to the common memory through 128-bit interface. In "Ungaged" mode, each controller has access to only one memory stick in the system and can operate with it without synchronization with the other memory controller controller, at different time and so on. In the ModReactor lab we did quite substantial testing to determine which mode is more felicitous. In almost any case Ungaged (2x64bit) does provide more performance EXCEPT in benchmarks such as Everest and SiSoft Sandra. We still ran all the tests including those of Everest and SiSoft Sandra in Ungaged mode. Though results of Phenom and Phenom II seem low, all other applications perform better in this mode.