Athlon 64 DDR vs DDR2 Preliminary Performance Comparison

Omega65

Anandtech takes the latest revison of AMD's upcoming Socket AM2 DDR2 CPU and compares it's performance using various DDR2 speeds to an S939 CPU running fast Cas2 DDR400.

Memory Speeds tested
DDR2 400 3-3-3-6
DDR2 533 3-3-3-8
DDR2 667 3-3-3-9
DDR2 800 3-3-3-10
DDR 400 2-2-2-7

The move by AMD from the current Socket 939 to Socket AM2 is pretty straightforward. We know the new AM2 processors will continue to be built using the same 90nm manufacturing process currently used for Athlon 64 processors; AMD does not show roadmaps with AM2 processors built on 65nm until early 2007. To this point AMD has also reiterated that AM2 will not bring any changes to the Athlon 64 core. In other words, the socket will change to the new AM2 Socket 940, but under the hood the current 939 and the upcoming AM2 940 will beat with the same heart. The only substantive difference expected with AM2 is the move from DDR memory to official AMD DDR2 Memory support.

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When the article OCZ EL PC2-8000 XTC: Low Latency PLUS DDR2-1100 was posted a couple of weeks ago, the potential of this incredibly fast DDR2 memory on the upcoming AM2 platform was clear. What was not expected was that the opportunity to run the DDR2-1000 memory through its paces on an AM2 was only a couple of weeks away. After looking more closely at DDR2 memory performance on the 4th spin of the AM2 processor it is clear AMD will definitely be able to launch AM2 with the expectation of better performance than the Socket 939 it replaces. This avoids one of the huge pratfalls that plagued Intel in their move to DDR2.

Source: Anandtech

Qeldroma

It looks like this release of the AM2 is mostly to propogate platform migration. I guess the good news is that the price structure really hasn't shifted that much for the procs and there is still a slight performance boost. Hopefully memory of size and quality will soon be priced to match their DDR performance counterparts as well.

It actually looks like the advances has to be in the core itself before a significant performance gain can be realized. Too bad they don't have Folding bench marks too.

RWB

I dont see how memory would impact folding much if at all unless it was uber DDR7 running a few hundred QHz

But with the current trend even DDR7 would only actually be twice as fast as goold ol' DDR since the timings would probably be capable of being done with the "1 mississippi, 2 mississippi" style counting.