Rambus DRAM Part 2: Performance

We mentioned that in the future we would need more memory bandwidth than what PC100/PC133 is capable of giving us, SPECviewperf is the perfect example of that. The AWadvs-03 viewset is generally limited by the fill rate of video cards but in this case you can see a clear performance difference between the SDRAM platforms and the RDRAM platforms.

While performance under the AWadvs-03 viewset isn't representative of what most AnandTech readers use their computers for, this benchmark does help to point out that the added bandwidth is there and can be taken advantage of. It would be interesting to see how a DDR SDRAM platform performs under this test, our guess would be that it would give the i820/PC800 a run for its money.

While the 840/PC800 platform takes the lead yet again, this time it is challenged by the BX133 platform again instead of the more expensive 820/PC800 setup. The DRV-06 viewset would most likely illustrate a level of bandwidth usage described by the middle of the latency vs bandwidth graph we provided earlier on where the bandwidth limitations of PC133 SDRAM begin to kick in but the latency of the PC800 RDRAM on the 820 platform holds it back from overpowering the competition.