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#1
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Benchmarking memory settings
My PC runs quite well with 16GB RAM at 1600MHz;and also 32GB at 1066MHz.
They feel the same, but there must be some difference. I want to compare the two, and googling gives me lots of options. But there's "benchmarking" and there's "benchmarking". Obviously the extra RAM will help in some apps. So then, I want an across the board benchmarking. What do you recommend? Ed |
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#2
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Benchmarking memory settings
Ed Cryer wrote:
My PC runs quite well with 16GB RAM at 1600MHz;and also 32GB at 1066MHz. They feel the same, but there must be some difference. I want to compare the two, and googling gives me lots of options. But there's "benchmarking" and there's "benchmarking". Obviously the extra RAM will help in some apps. So then, I want an across the board benchmarking. What do you recommend? Ed The memtest86+ screen actually has a benchmark, in the upper left. The various levels of cache are benchmarked, as to how fast in GB/sec they are. The last level of cache itself, might be considered to be the RAM sticks. Your results should bear some proportionality to speed. In terms of the two numbers you might get. The 1600MHz setting has more bandwidth than the 1066MHz setting. This is how I discovered that my RAM with its theoretical 76.8GB/sec, was actually doing pretty poorly at ~17GB/sec measured in memtest86+. Normally memory might be 60% efficient, and I could take 0.6 of 76.8GB/sec. But the actual measurement wasn't nearly that good. That's an example of a Synthetic test. Similar tests you can run from Windows, might have the keyword "Stream" benchmark in the name. Maybe Sisoftware Sandra has such a bench in it. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ ******* An example of an application which is actually "sensitive" to memory speed, is 7ZIP compression. The interval taken to compress your goods, will be shorter on the 1600MHz RAM than the 1066MHz RAM. While 7ZIP should have a menu item entitled "benchmark", you can just as easily take a standard file of some sort on a hard drive, and run the same compression settings on it, with the RAM at one of the two settings, and compare. Depending on how shabby a memory implementation a platform has, 7ZIP could be 50% slower. Other applications hit in the caches a lot, which requires fewer actual memory accesses per second. Intel is especially good at hiding the details of RAM, with AMD being slightly less good (you have an incentive to tweak the AMD systems a bit more). Whereas 7ZIP is a bit of a "cache buster", so the cache is less effective at hiding the details of the RAM. And cranking the RAM, will help a bit with 7ZIP compression. In 7Z "Ultra" mode, the dictionary for each core running compression, is 600MB. The 600MB figure doesn't fit in the CPU cache (6MB to 12MB say, in size). Some parts of each dictionary are consulted more frequently than others. If you had 8 cores, the entire footprint is 4.8GB of memory, and definitely doesn't fit in any cache. It's with that sort of compression job, that the memory conditions make a difference. So if I was the Geek Squad guy, trying to convince you what a difference such tuning makes, I would use 7ZIP for the "before" and "after" results. There are a *ton* of other things, that laugh at memory optimization, and don't budge an inch. I had a Core2, with DDR2-533 RAM in it, and most of the time, I couldn't tell how hellishly slow it was compared to the system with the better DDR2 RAM in it. Only 7ZIP let out my secret :-) https://www.7-zip.org/ Paul |
#3
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Benchmarking memory settings
Paul wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote: My PC runs quite well with 16GB RAM at 1600MHz;and also 32GB at 1066MHz. They feel the same, but there must be some difference. I want to compare the two, and googling gives me lots of options. But there's "benchmarking" and there's "benchmarking". Obviously the extra RAM will help in some apps. So then, I want an across the board benchmarking. What do you recommend? Ed The memtest86+ screen actually has a benchmark, in the upper left. The various levels of cache are benchmarked, as to how fast in GB/sec they are. The last level of cache itself, might be considered to be the RAM sticks. Your results should bear some proportionality to speed. In terms of the two numbers you might get. The 1600MHz setting has more bandwidth than the 1066MHz setting. This is how I discovered that my RAM with its theoretical 76.8GB/sec, was actually doing pretty poorly at ~17GB/sec measured in memtest86+. Normally memory might be 60% efficient, and I could take 0.6 of 76.8GB/sec. But the actual measurement wasn't nearly that good. That's an example of a Synthetic test. Similar tests you can run from Windows, might have the keyword "Stream" benchmark in the name. Maybe Sisoftware Sandra has such a bench in it. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ ******* An example of an application which is actually "sensitive" to memory speed, is 7ZIP compression. The interval taken to compress your goods, will be shorter on the 1600MHz RAM than the 1066MHz RAM. While 7ZIP should have a menu item entitled "benchmark", you can just as easily take a standard file of some sort on a hard drive, and run the same compression settings on it, with the RAM at one of the two settings, and compare. Depending on how shabby a memory implementation a platform has, 7ZIP could be 50% slower. Other applications hit in the caches a lot, which requires fewer actual memory accesses per second. Intel is especially good at hiding the details of RAM, with AMD being slightly less good (you have an incentive to tweak the AMD systems a bit more). Whereas 7ZIP is a bit of a "cache buster", so the cache is less effective at hiding the details of the RAM. And cranking the RAM, will help a bit with 7ZIP compression. In 7Z "Ultra" mode, the dictionary for each core running compression, is 600MB. The 600MB figure doesn't fit in the CPU cache (6MB to 12MB say, in size). Some parts of each dictionary are consulted more frequently than others. If you had 8 cores, the entire footprint is 4.8GB of memory, and definitely doesn't fit in any cache. It's with that sort of compression job, that the memory conditions make a difference. So if I was the Geek Squad guy, trying to convince you what a difference such tuning makes, I would use 7ZIP for the "before" and "after" results. There are a *ton* of other things, that laugh at memory optimization, and don't budge an inch. I had a Core2, with DDR2-533 RAM in it, and most of the time, I couldn't tell how hellishly slow it was compared to the system with the better DDR2 RAM in it. Only 7ZIP let out my secret :-) https://www.7-zip.org/ Â*Â* Paul My memory sticks have 1600Mhz in the name. They seem to do quite well, so I was wondering if I might try upping the Mhz to the next level. I guess I can only try. I've been tinkering with memory for some days now and I haven't fried anything. When Windows has hit a problem it just shows a message saying that it's got an error, is taking a system dump, and will then restart. Do you think your idea of zipping up a large bundle of files would be better than, say, ripping a large DVD or using Handbrake to convert something large? Ed |
#4
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Benchmarking memory settings
Ed Cryer wrote:
Paul wrote: Ed Cryer wrote: My PC runs quite well with 16GB RAM at 1600MHz;and also 32GB at 1066MHz. They feel the same, but there must be some difference. I want to compare the two, and googling gives me lots of options. But there's "benchmarking" and there's "benchmarking". Obviously the extra RAM will help in some apps. So then, I want an across the board benchmarking. What do you recommend? Ed The memtest86+ screen actually has a benchmark, in the upper left. The various levels of cache are benchmarked, as to how fast in GB/sec they are. The last level of cache itself, might be considered to be the RAM sticks. Your results should bear some proportionality to speed. In terms of the two numbers you might get. The 1600MHz setting has more bandwidth than the 1066MHz setting. This is how I discovered that my RAM with its theoretical 76.8GB/sec, was actually doing pretty poorly at ~17GB/sec measured in memtest86+. Normally memory might be 60% efficient, and I could take 0.6 of 76.8GB/sec. But the actual measurement wasn't nearly that good. That's an example of a Synthetic test. Similar tests you can run from Windows, might have the keyword "Stream" benchmark in the name. Maybe Sisoftware Sandra has such a bench in it. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/stream/ ******* An example of an application which is actually "sensitive" to memory speed, is 7ZIP compression. The interval taken to compress your goods, will be shorter on the 1600MHz RAM than the 1066MHz RAM. While 7ZIP should have a menu item entitled "benchmark", you can just as easily take a standard file of some sort on a hard drive, and run the same compression settings on it, with the RAM at one of the two settings, and compare. Depending on how shabby a memory implementation a platform has, 7ZIP could be 50% slower. Other applications hit in the caches a lot, which requires fewer actual memory accesses per second. Intel is especially good at hiding the details of RAM, with AMD being slightly less good (you have an incentive to tweak the AMD systems a bit more). Whereas 7ZIP is a bit of a "cache buster", so the cache is less effective at hiding the details of the RAM. And cranking the RAM, will help a bit with 7ZIP compression. In 7Z "Ultra" mode, the dictionary for each core running compression, is 600MB. The 600MB figure doesn't fit in the CPU cache (6MB to 12MB say, in size). Some parts of each dictionary are consulted more frequently than others. If you had 8 cores, the entire footprint is 4.8GB of memory, and definitely doesn't fit in any cache. It's with that sort of compression job, that the memory conditions make a difference. So if I was the Geek Squad guy, trying to convince you what a difference such tuning makes, I would use 7ZIP for the "before" and "after" results. There are a *ton* of other things, that laugh at memory optimization, and don't budge an inch. I had a Core2, with DDR2-533 RAM in it, and most of the time, I couldn't tell how hellishly slow it was compared to the system with the better DDR2 RAM in it. Only 7ZIP let out my secret :-) https://www.7-zip.org/ Paul My memory sticks have 1600Mhz in the name. They seem to do quite well, so I was wondering if I might try upping the Mhz to the next level. I guess I can only try. I've been tinkering with memory for some days now and I haven't fried anything. When Windows has hit a problem it just shows a message saying that it's got an error, is taking a system dump, and will then restart. Do you think your idea of zipping up a large bundle of files would be better than, say, ripping a large DVD or using Handbrake to convert something large? Ed The benchmarks should be the most sensitive, with 7ZIP. Handbrake will have a dependency too, but at a guess, not quite as severe. Your progression of "non-windows" tests, were supposed to prevent Windows throwing an error. (Like running Prime95 under Linux, before booting back to Windows.) The worst case corruption in Windows, comes from carrying the Registry portions in RAM and writing them back at shutdown. That's a "magnet" for errors, and you don't really want to run Windows if the system is unstable, for fear of borking the Registry. A System Restore point keeps a copy of the Registry, and you can use that as a fallback if you don't have any other backups handy. Paul |
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