System Memory Bandwidth Performance

System Memory Bandwidth Performance

Let's chart up some results so we can compare them:

So here is a mixture of dual and quad channel results varying with processors and platforms. We tested the memory as highlighted in the charts. Now, with the regular memory at 2666 MHz, we already see good performance hovering at the 40K marker, there is nothing wrong with that at all. It's just that you can get so much more bandwidth at a higher frequency if you tweak a bit. At 3200 MHz, you are reaching that 46K GB/s (dual-channel).

Memory Write Test

We obviously did the same with the memory write tests. The write performance jumps to ~48K MB/s at 3333 MHz in dual-channel. If you like to stick to 3200 MHz, just enable XMP in the BIOS and you are good to go. With complicated workloads and database applications, here's where that extra bandwidth would kick in. The reality for normal PC usage and gaming, these differences do not mean a lot on an Intel platform.

 Latency results are highly dependent on the processor's memory controllers. However faster memory and tighter timings will have an effect on that as well.