Lab Update - Patriot Memory Viper Series DDR3-1333

As·sump·tion - an assuming that something is true; a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted. A very powerful word if we might say so and one that can generally get us in trouble while reviewing hardware. During the course of testing for our upcoming DDR3 roundup, we assumed a few items to be true about the memory we were reviewing. Turns out, our assumptions were off the mark, but for good reason.

Our first assumption is that we should concentrate on the DDR3-1600 kits as they provided a wide range of flexibility for most users. Most of the performance oriented kits would easily hit DDR3-1800+ at decent timings and voltages, satisfying the overclocking needs of all but the hardcore enthusiasts while at the same time allowing very tight timings at lower clock speeds for applications that responded best to a combination of bandwidth and low latencies.

The reason for choosing DDR3-1600 first is that the initial DDR3-1066 and DDR3-1333 6GB kits we received generally clocked about 100MHz~200MHz above their rated speeds and latency improvements required voltages above 1.65V in most cases on our i7 platform. In addition, pricing was not that much less on a per Gigabyte basis, which certainly justified our higher performing selections at the time. By chance, we were looking at 6GB kit prices on Newegg and NCIX last month and noticed a couple of DDR3-1333 6GB kits had dropped below the $100 mark (a virtual flood of 6GB kits are now hitting the $100 mark).

These kits were not available when we started collecting review samples a few weeks ago so we ordered a new Patriot Viper DDR3-1333 (PVT36G1333ELK) 6GB kit for a very reasonable price of $93.99 plus free shipping. Our reason was simple, we just wanted to see how well the latest “budget” DDR3 product on the market clocked and if our assumptions were still correct about the first 1066/1333 kits we received. Considering our test results with the Patriot kit, we checked the credit line and ordered several “budget” 6GB kits from GSkill, Mushkin, Crucial, OCZ, Corsair, and others to feature in our roundup.

We based our second assumption on test results with our DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2000 kits providing the best possible performance on the i7 platform, especially for those overclocking the 920 processors. Our reasoning for sticking with the higher end kits was sound until recent events. The i7 platform was an expensive proposition for most users who wanted to upgrade with decent motherboards costing $300, the “budget” 920 processor going for nearly $300, and 6GB low voltage DDR3 kits costing a good $225 or higher for products that could keep up with the 920 overclocks. This resulted in a very niche market condition and one that if you had to ask the price then you probably were not going to be able to afford it.

A few weeks later, we have X58 motherboards selling for $170 with rebates, a new i7 processor stepping (D0) coming from Intel that promises a little extra headroom in clock rates, and 6GB DDR3 kits selling for around $90. The entry cost to get into an i7 platform has dropped about 34% in the last six weeks if you are pinching pennies like most of us. Guess what, the performance difference in platform selections then and now is less than 2% at best. Only those who plan on serious overclocking need to worry about spending more, but that is always the case.

Another factor in dropping prices is the rise from ashes act that AMD has accomplished with the Phenom II product line. True, it is not in the same performance category as the i7 when it comes to crunching numbers or heavy manipulation of digital content, but the Phenom II is extremely competitive on a price/performance basis when looking at the big picture. Pairing up the current Phenom II X3 720BE with either a DDR2/DDR3 based 790FX/GX motherboard results in some of the best bang for the buck performance you are likely to experience this year, at least until the new X4 95x series comes out.

Of course, Intel has the P55 platform launching later this year and we mention that because DDR3 will soon become the memory of choice for anyone upgrading to a new platform. The Phenom II platform lets you retain your current DDR2 based AM2+ setup until you decide to make the switch and we will soon see that is not a bad option from an everyday performance or cost viewpoint. However, those who need the absolute best performance from the Phenom II should go the DDR3 route at this point.

All that said, we are here today to take a first look at the Patriot Viper Series (PVT36G1333ELK) DDR3-1333 CAS9 6GB memory kit. Heresy, one might claim looking at the specs but this kit delivers the flexibility we have been seeking, only at a lower price point. Until we finish testing our recent "budget" arrivals, we thought it prudent to provide a quick look at how well this particular memory kit clocks and if it higher memory speeds actually matter at stock processor speeds or mild overclocks.

Memory Scaling on Core i7 - Is DDR3-1066 Really the Best Choice?

And we begin, with a graph:

The graph above represents the cost, from Newegg.com, of 11 different 6GB DDR3 memory kits (1066 C7/C5 are the same kit). The only variables are the manufacturer and speed of the DDR3 memory included in the kit.

The least expensive DDR3-1066 6GB kit we purchased sells for $80, the most expensive 6GB kit? $289. That’s over a $200 difference; that and some pocket change is enough to pay for a sweet new video card, a nice 22” monitor, or even a iPhone 3GS.

All of that extra money is going somewhere: frequency and latency. The lowest end kit has a data rate of 1066MHz and a CAS latency of 7 cycles. The most expensive kit has a 1866MHz data rate at the same CAS latency; that’s a 75% increase in data rate.

A 10% increase in CPU speed rarely yields more than a 4 or 5% increase in performance, but what about a 75% increase in memory speed? We don’t have a single page on AnandTech to point you to that would answer that question. At least we didn’t, until today.

A Brief History of DDR3

We first met DDR3 alongside Intel’s P35 chipset. It’s performance at the time was at best equal to or usually worse than DDR2 while carrying a significant price premium. It wasn’t until the release of the Intel X48 and NVIDIA 790i chipsets that Socket 775 users could even see an advantage to using DDR3 and even then, it was primarily for benchmarking contests - hooray, because we all know how important those are.

There were some tangible advantages to DDR3 from the start, the biggest being it’s lower operating voltage. DDR2 memory required 1.8V while DDR3 could run at 1.5V, this made DDR3 particularly attractive for notebooks but on the desktop the advantage was sort of abused.

In order to take advantage of DDR3’s higher memory speed, benchmarking enthusiasts often had to use DDR3-1866/2000 kits that required voltages in the 1.8V~2.0V range to reach these clock speeds. Performance improvements in certain benchmarks were available through brute force use of voltages and ICs that allowed high memory speeds at decent latencies. In the end, improvements in actual applications were just not worth the cost or trouble of using DDR3 compared to DDR2.

Intel made no secret of its plans to move the vast majority of their processor lineups to DDR3 memory a few years ago. They truly wanted/desired that DDR3 would be the standard memory of choice by the time P45/X48 launched, but DDR3’s limited availability, middling performance, and a price premium that was truly prohibitive for the mainstream crowd, let alone the enthusiast market space made this desire impossible. As such, this left users with memory controllers not truly optimized for either memory technology that resulted in performance not significantly different from earlier Core 2 supporting S775 chipsets.

AMD recently released the AM3 platform and their AM3 based Phenom II processors support both DDR2 and DDR3 allowing users to either upgrade to AM3 boards or keep using their DDR2 based AM2+ boards, a simple if not elegant solution. With the recent release of new boards, BIOS optimizations, and near cost parity with DDR2, we now think DDR3 is a viable option for AMD users.

That said, DDR3 started coming into its prime last fall as the release of second and third generation DDR3 devices along with Intel’s Core i7. Core i7 and the X58 platform introduced Intel’s first on-die memory controller. Aside from other architectural improvements, Core i7 supports three DDR3 memory channels compared to the standard two channel setup, yielding some impressive bandwidth numbers.

There was one problem with this new design, a real fly in the ointment actually for the memory suppliers. Current JDEC specifications list 1.50V as the official voltage specification for DDR3 with a move to 1.35V in the near future and eventually to 1.20V. However, most of the performance oriented DDR3 modules released for the Core 2 platforms generally operated at 1.8V~2.0V in order to hit high speeds with decent latencies. In essence, the memory kits were already overclocked to hit clock speeds that made DDR3 a performance consideration on S775. The memory controllers on the Core 2 based Northbridge products could easily handle these voltages and surprisingly enough, so could the ICs.

Well, Intel officially released their recommended memory voltages for the Core i7 several months before launch with 1.50V as the recommended base voltage and 1.65V as the suggested maximum along with 1.35V for VTT (QPI) maximum. This left the memory suppliers in a bind as true high-speed low-voltage ICs were not going to appear until after the Core i7 launch. Intel extended official support to DDR3-800/1066 speeds only, although most current X58 motherboards support speeds up to DDR3-2133 or higher.

At the Core i7 launch, the market ended up with a bevy of DDR3-1066/1333 low-voltage kits with a sprinkling of higher speed DDR3-1600 and DDR3-1866 kits based on highly binned ICs that met the 1.65V recommendation. One other twist was that the memory suppliers had to package low-voltage higher-speed 3-DIMM kits instead of the normal 2-DIMM configuration in order to satisfy triple channel owners.

Fast forward to today and we see the wide availability of high-speed low-voltage DDR3 products with more choices coming on a daily basis. In fact, the availability of DDR3 products almost matches that of DDR2 with similar price points. By the end of this year, DDR3 products will outnumber DDR2 offerings although it will be a couple of years before DDR3 usage overtakes DDR2.

OCZ Blade DDR3-2133 - Is it Fast Enough?

OCZ shipped us their DDR3-2133 Blade 6GB kit last month and asked us to review it as part of our Core i7 975 launch. Of course, we could not refuse that offer. We received the Blade kit, our 975 ES processor, and several other premium components, but hit a huge bump in the road during testing. You see, it turns out our 975 engineering samples could not clock their way out of a paper bag. As such, we decided to order a retail 975 and it finally arrived along with a retail EVGA X58 Classified (E759) motherboard.

We were confident the lethal combination of a very good Core i7 975 and one of the best clocking motherboards around will allow us to take this memory kit to its limits. However, yet another speed bump presented itself as our cooling capabilities in the labs here are limited to various high-end air coolers or TEC units such as the CoolIT Systems Freezone Elite. Armed with the realization that we were going to be limited to the 4.5GHz range and resulting 2150 memory speeds we decided to pack the kit up for shipment. Raja will be the lucky recipient as he has the proper cooling equipment available and is already working on a DDR3-2000+ article at this moment for the more fanatical readers.

In the meantime, we ran a few numbers with a Core i7 920D0 stepping at both stock core speeds and an almost universal 4.2GHz overclock on the ASUS Rampage II GENE motherboard. We also completed a couple of quick overclocks on the 920/Classified combo just to show what a couple of minutes of playing around with the BIOS can provide with this kit on high-end air cooling. As you will see shortly, there really is no reason for the typical desktop user to procure a kit like this for 24/7 use, unless you just want one for a status symbol.

We are sure OCZ will welcome your business with open arms no matter your purpose, but their primary audience is the people who benchmark for a living. In that regard, this kit is designed to compete against the latest DDR3-2000 C7 6GB kits from Corsair and GSkill. As such, today's preview could be considered somewhat laughable by the hardcore enthusiast but it is perfect segue into our mainstream memory articles later this week. That is not to say this kit is completely without merit, it will easily run DDR3-2133 C7 settings at voltages we have not reached with the other two manufacturer's products and for benchmarking activities that is an important distinction. For the other 99% of us, it is fun to see the numbers but we have far better alternatives available in the market.

The Kit-

Gallery: OCZ DDR3-2133 Images

• 
• 
• 
• 

This is OCZ's top rated Blade series kit. Of course looking at the specifications it is the top rated kit available, period. Whether it is the top performing kit is something we will answer shortly. OCZ designed this kit to operate at DDR3-2133 (1067MHz) at timings of 8-9-8-24 on the X58 platform with 1.65v, preferably with the Core i7 975. The reason being, IMC load, the lower the Bclk, the lower the load and voltage requirements on the platform when using the unlocked multiplier on the 975 to gain CPU speed compared to a locked processor like the 920 or W3540 that requires high Bclks to reach like processor speeds. It is a little more complicated than that, but that is the 10,000ft overview.

The OCZ Blade OCZ3B2133LV6GK features the top (1%) binned Elpida Hyper J1108BASE-MNH-E IC or the "Hyper" for short. These IC's are already rated for the upcoming ultra low 1.2V/1.35V voltage specification as well as the current JEDEC standard of 1.5V. One of the primary differences between these IC's and all others is that they use copper interconnects as opposed to aluminum, resulting in higher clock speeds at lower voltages. I wonder where we have heard that use of technology before. Anyway, it is obvious by now that we are not dealing with your mass produced DDR3-1066 kits and as such we expect a heavy price premium when these kits launch in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, let's take a quick look at these unique modules being subjected to clock rates that probably had them screaming, not from pain, but rather embarrassment.

DDR3-2000+ Memory Kits - Fast but Flawed

We just looked at i7 memory scaling performance and now it is time to chill a few processors to see what those DDR3-2000+ kits are capable of for the serious overclocker. As it turns out that was the opening to our original article, which we planned to launch in conjunction with the DDR3 memory-scaling article.

However, the best plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. Unfortunately, we met delay after delay as every one of our Elpida “Hyper” based kits failed on us in some form or fashion over the past few weeks. At times, a single module would fail and eventually the whole kit in certain instances. Eventually our patience wore thin as even warranty replacements started failing and we knew this was not an isolated problem.

In fact, this problem has become widespread in the extreme overclocking community. Admittedly, widespread in this particular group means a few hundred users. Nevertheless, this audience purchases these extreme memory kits with prices tags reaching the $500+ level at times and expects like performance and quality in return. Certainly, the performance is there, quality we are not so sure about right now.

We could attribute the demise of our modules to the elevated voltage levels we have used for this article and normally we would go that direction and stop for the day. However, we had modules die on us using no more 1.50V VDimm and stock VTT settings in a variety of boards. We are not the only ones, as it seems a number of users have also been through the RMA process (a few more than once) regardless of voltage settings.

The “official” cause of death is unknown at present, while the usual suspects, such as manufacturing errors, motherboard voltage/ user over voltage issues and temperature related deterioration are the obvious perpetrators. The “unofficial” cause of death is simply a quality problem with the Elpida “Hyper” based ICs according to various sources we have spoken with the past couple of weeks. Granted, the other factors can and probably do account for a certain failure rate, but the randomness of our failures along with others, especially at first POST or during stock benchmarking lead us to believe that the quality of the IC is the primary factor at this point.

We have contacted Elpida about the problem but do not have an “official” response from their engineering group yet. However, the problem is serious enough that Corsair informed us earlier today that they askedtheir retailers to return any kits in the channel. They will not be selling kits based on the Elpida Hyper ICs until an enhanced manufacturing and testing process is in place to ensure the quality of this particular product before shipment. We applaud Corsair for being aggressive in regards to this problem and we expect/hope other suppliers to follow suit.

Most of the suppliers have reported that a relatively small percentage of kits appear to be affected. Just how small is unknown. Based on our own numbers and those of other users it appears to us it is significantly more serious than we were lead to believe a few weeks ago. We are now at the point of just saying that you are better off avoiding Elpida Hyper kits due to the ‘frequently random’ level of failures with modules. However, at least for now, all of the suppliers are fully backing their warranties. If you need the available benchmarking performance generated by these kits then it is worth the risk. Just make sure of the warranty terms before purchase, or simply put, buyer beware.

When we speak of failures, there are two types, a catastrophic failure where the module dies instantly and one of deterioration. One or more of the modules failing to map fully to the operating system usually marks the first sign of deterioration. Moving the modules around between the slots can work around some of this, although from our experience this is a primary sign that things are beginning to go downhill fast. This phenomenon is not to be confused with the i7 memory controller skipping to map a module because of insufficient voltages for the applied clocks.

The next step is when the module no longer clocks up at stock voltages or given voltage limits like 1.65V VDimm. We have witnessed modules not clocking above 1900MHz or so regardless of voltages and slowly dropping to 1200MHz before total failure.

With all that said, we decided to complete the article as there are users out there that have not experienced any of the issues at all or those still wishing to take a chance on these kits. Two of the kits we have been pushing for raw bandwidth over the past few weeks are Corsair’s Dominator GT 7-8-7-20 6GB kit and OCZ’s Blade 2133 8-9-8-24 6GB kit. We have tested other kits, but these are the last two standing in the labs although both of them are now showing signs of deterioration.

Corsair chose to stick with the tried and tested 2000MHz CAS 7-8-7-20 formula while OCZ gives up the tighter CAS rating in a bid to woo the market with a 2133MHz kit at 8-9-8-24 timings. On the face of it, we would say that both kits should be capable of similar results assuming that SPD and PCB differences between the two are not massive. OCZ and Corsair tell us their respective top end kits represent the top 1% of the Elpida Hyper yield.

We’re keeping it simple today, running a few of the preferred benchmarking programs in a bid to find maximum frequency limits for the modules along with a small comparison of scores at the same CPU frequency. We have already shown that these kits are not really needed by the general enthusiast and typically do not improve application performance significantly enough to warrant the increased cost. However, they do provide a certain degree of flexibility when overclocking and allow for very tight latencies at a variety of memory speeds.

Two New Ions: ASUS AT3N7A-I and ASRock Ion 330

The first companies to support non-Intel products are those that have the weakest relationships with Intel. How Intel is able to ensure this is the crux of the AMD v. Intel antitrust suit, but that’s not the point of today’s story.

NVIDIA’s Ion platform, at least when first introduced, combined Intel’s Atom CPU with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9300/9400M integrated graphics chipset. This offered better performance and modern features compared to Intel’s 945G chipset, what Intel was bundling with Atom. Intel still sold the CPUs but it lost the chipset sale and got upstaged by NVIDIA. Intel doesn’t like being upstaged by anyone.

Intel’s partners are very cautious when supporting a product like Ion. They don’t want to appear too eager and thus Intel’s closest partners wait to see if a product like Ion succeeds before attempting to jump on the bandwagon.

Zotac built the first mini-ITX Ion motherboard. While Zotac builds several Intel motherboards, they are hardly considered a tier 1 motherboard manufacturer. Zotac doesn’t get preferential treatment by Intel and thus Zotac doesn’t have to worry about ruffling any feathers by releasing an Ion motherboard.

I can’t tell you how well the Zotac Ion has sold, but reading our review and user experiences with the board I can tell you that customers are pleased. It’s a good product and it fills a niche that Intel currently has no answer to. I’m not even sure if Pine Trail will address that market either.

ASUS was Intel’s launch partner for Atom. The first place you found the Atom processor was in ASUS’Eee PC and Eee Box. The rest of the OEMs followed. It’s no surprise that ASUS didn’t build an Ion motherboard or an Ion netbook for that matter.

ASUS tested the waters with its value manufacturing brand earlier this year. ASRock put out an Ion system based on the Intel Atom 330 processor; note the use of the word system. The ASRock Ion differed from the Zotac Ion motherboard in that it was a barebones system complete with mini-ITX chassis, external power supply, 2GB of RAM, slim optical drive and 320GB hard drive. All you needed to add was an OS.

The ASRock Ion 330 (left) vs. a 3.5" HDD (right). We're not too far away from having P4-class PCs in the space of a hard drive.

The whole package sets you back $379.99 (ASRock does charge a slight premium for building the thing).

A couple of weeks ago we got word that the second mini-ITX Ion motherboard was coming our way. The manufacturer? ASUS. Ballsy.

Unlike the ASRock and Zotac Ion solutions, ASUS gave its Ion board a real and unnecessarily complex name. This is the AT3N7A-I:

Also gone is the North American favorite “Rock Solid, Heart Touching” phrase on the box. Instead we’re given two new slogans: Inspiring Innovation, Persistent Perfection (hooray for alliteration) and Perfectly suit your digital lifestyle.

A Closer Look at the ASUS AT3N7A-I

ASUS’ Ion board doesn’t come with a power supply, it instead has a 24-pin ATX power supply connector and a 4-pin 12V connector for CPU power. The ASUS Ion is eerily similar to the Zotac board but with poorer color choices.

Zotac’s board has on-board WiFi, while ASUS’ board has on-board Bluetooth.

ASUS (left) vs. Zotac (right)

ASUS adds a ton more USB ports on the rear of the AT3N7A-I. You get a total of 8 USB ports (+2 more via an internal header), a single PS2 port, HDMI out, VGA out, coax/optical out, eSATA, Ethernet and the standard array of six 1/8” jacks for analog audio out.

On the board itself there are three SATA ports, like the Zotac board, but ASUS also adds a standard 32-bit PCI slot (not PCIe).

ASUS (left) vs. Zotac (right)

Two DIMM slots round out the package.

i5 / P55 Lab Update - Now with more numbers

i5 / P55 Lab Update -

We welcomed Anand back into the office with open arms this past weekend. He immediately started working on an in-depth analysis of clock for clock comparisons for several processors as a follow up to our Lynnfield launch article (among many other things). This analysis along with a quick i7/860 performance review will be available in the near future.

In the meantime, I have additional performance results using the P55 motherboard test suite along with some unusual results from our gaming selections. I am not going to dwell on with commentary in this short update. We will let the numbers speak for themselves at this point. Let’s get right to the results today, but first, the test setup.

Test Setup-

For our test results we setup each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings and sub-timings. The P55 and 790FX motherboards utilized 8GB of DDR3, while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7/920, i7/870, and i7/860 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.

We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5/750 stock setup as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported in current BIOS releases for this processor at a stock Bclk setting of 133. We had early BIOS releases that offered the native 1600 setting but stability was a serious problem and support was pulled for the time being. Performance is essentially the same between the two settings. When we overclocked the i5/750 to 3.8GHz, we utilized the same DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 1T timings as the i7 setups.

The AMD 790FX setup is slightly different as trying to run DDR3-1600 at CAS 7 timings on the 1:4 divider is extremely difficult. DDR3-1600 is not natively supported on the Phenom II series so this divider is provided with a caveat that you are overclocking the memory bus. The same holds true for the Lynnfield (i7/8xx, i5/7xx) processors as DDR3-1333 is officially the highest memory speed supported and it is DDR3-1066 for the Bloomfield (i7/9xx).

Without resorting to some serious overvolting and relaxing of sub-timings, we set our AMD board up at DDR3-1600 8-8-8-20 1T timings. The difference in performance between C7 and C8 DDR3-1600 is practically immeasurable in applications and games on this platform. You might pick up an additional few tenths of second in SuperPi or a couple of extra points in AquaMark or 3DMark 2001SE, but otherwise performance is about equal.

However, in order to satisfy some of our more enthusiastic AMD supporters, we also increased our Northbridge speed from 2000MHz to 2200MHz to equalize, if not improve, our memory performance on the AMD system. Yes, we know, further increasing the NB speed will certainly result in additional performance but the focus of this short article is to show clock for clock results at like settings. Personally, I would run DDR3-1333 C6 with 8GB as this platform favors tighter timings over pure bandwidth.

Last, but not least, I only ran the i5/750 without turbo enabled and the P45/C2Q setup is missing. I am still completing those numbers. Anand will be providing additional analysis on the other Lynnfield processors in his update. The image gallery below contains our Everest memory results with each processor overclocked at similar memory settings along with voltage/uncore/subtiming options. I will go into these in more detail once the motherboard roundups start. For the time being, the 860/P55 offers slightly better throughput and latency numbers than the 920/X58 when overclocked. At stock, the numbers favor the Lynnfield, but primarily due to the turbo mode.

Other than that we are in a holding pattern on the P55 roundups at this time trying to figure out some unusual game and 3D Render results with our GTX275 video cards. I will discuss this problem in the game results.

Gallery: P55 Clock Comparison

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

ATI HD 5870 Scaling Performance: X58 vs P55 Showdown

We will start off our P55 coverage this week by answering a question that has been raised numerous times as of late, “Exactly how will the new DX11 cards perform on the Lynnfield/P55 platform compared to the Bloomfield/X58?”. The answer to that question depends on the game engine, settings, and processor choice for the most part. There has been much speculation that the Lynnfield/P55 platform would fail miserably with the next generation cards. That said, the difference in platform performance between the first DX11 capable cards available (ATI HD 5870/5850) is about the same as previous generation cards we tested in the Lynnfield launch article.

This means for single card performance both platforms trade blows for supremacy. However, for those running CF/SLI setups, the X58 continues to be the platform of choice for users wanting the best possible benchmark results. Does that mean the integrated dual x8 PCIe 2.0 logic on Lynnfield is a poor choice compared to the dual x16 PCIe 2.0 sporting X58? Absolutely not based on our initial tests. In fact, it should satisfy most users.

Now for those making an investment into an ultra high-end HD 5870 CrossFireX setup, the Core i7/X58 configuration will simply offer the best possible performance. Of course that performance comes at a cost, particularly power consumption. However, we have a feeling most owners sporting two HD 5870s are not that concerned about Al Gore knocking on their door in the middle of the night.

In the meantime, we have our first performance results comparing the Core i7/860 and P55 against the like priced Core i7/920 and X58 in a variety of games. We are going to state this upfront, this is not a GPU review of the HD 5870. Instead, we decided to pull this information out of the upcoming high-end P55 roundup so it did not get lost in the mix. Our resolution is limited to 1920x1080 that we use in the motherboard test suite. As such, the numbers speak for themselves. So let’s get right to the results today, but first, the test setup.

Test Setup-

For our test results we setup each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings and sub-timings. The P55 motherboard utilized 8GB of DDR3, while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7/920 and i7/860 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings. All power management features were enabled on each board and voltages were set at the lowest possible values when overclocking while still retaining 24/7 stability.

The image gallery below contains our Everest memory results with each processor overclocked at similar memory settings along with voltage/uncore/subtiming options. The 860/P55 offers slightly better throughput and overall latency numbers than the 920/X58 when overclocked. At stock, the latency numbers favor Lynnfield with assistance from the turbo mode.

Gallery: HD 5870 and P55

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Our game selection today is varied but is missing a couple of titles we wanted to show. We pulled Crysis Warhead as the CrossFireX scaling numbers were under 8% and Need For Speed: Shift does not have a CrossFire profile yet. AMD is currently working on updated CF profiles for the latest games. We also had some corruption problems when running Empire:Total War and Anno 1404 that is under investigation.

All of our gaming performance results are reported in average frame rates per second in the main bar graph with minimum frame rates reported in the text section. The results are sorted by the average frame rates. We are also reporting single card results with the HD 5870 running at PCIe 2.0 x8 speeds on the P55 platform to compare performance to the x16 single card setup. We installed an Intel CT Gigabit network card in the second physical x16 slot in order to force x8 operation.