READ: Bursting the Athlon 64 Memory bandwidth bubble

[TechZ]

Mad Shrimps posted an article about Athlon 64 Memory bandwidth.

excerpt:

Do you need high speed memory to have the fastest A64 on the block? We don´t think so, we think having memory faster then PC3200 is overkill and does not improve real world performance one bit. We put our money where our mouth is and prove that Gamers don't need expensive memory to enjoy fast Athlon 64 performance.

[confus-ed]

Ah .. reverse logic to that usually applied in benchmarks ! Lets actually test real world performance & not some theorectical transfers which never happen anyway ! (but I do sooooo love benchmarks - remember there's lies, damned lies, statistics & benchmarks !!! )

..The synthetic benchmarks show a large difference, but when it comes down to games, which rely on the graphics card quite a bit, you will see that they hardly run any faster, +1-3% at best is all you are going to get..

If they'd done these benchmarks with a PCI-E system, methinks they might have gotten quite a bit more 'oomph' & conclude quite differently (more like an 8-12% gain !!) (as whats hampering performance isn't the memory bus at all, its it waiting for the agp bus to catch up !)