Replies to post #23533 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[mas]

The current SPECcpu2000 memory footprint is designed for 256Mb computers. The new SPECcpu2004 will probably increase this to 1Gb. Registered memory is really a must if you want to run more than 1Gb without timing degradations due to the 4-bank optimum limit per memory channel. As it happens I think 1Gb is just about optimal for a general-purpose PC. I upgraded from 512Mb because of eventual extensive swap-file usage when running many applications for hours, this has now been cured. Most versions of Windows won't normally exceed 1Gb memory usage in general-purpose 32-bit application usage.

http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/analysis/memory/

[jhalada]

Klaus,

SPEC runs in a modest memory footprint, beyond which, further additions of RAM will not improve performance. So what matters is memory speed (latency, bandwidth), and processor cache to minimize memory accesses.

Ont transaction processing benchmarks, memory size certainly matters, as the databases are in 100s of GB. Memory speed also matters. So these benchmarks should definitely see a boost. I hope someone makes new submissions for Opteron and faster memory.

Joe