how much of a bottleneck is this memory speed?

[Turbof1]

Hello,

 

One of my pc's is an old system with the following specs:

-Rampage III Extreme motherboard

-Xeon X5650 6 cores OC'ed to 4.2Ghz

-A rather unfortunate mix and match of a 3x2GB tripple channel DDR3 memory, and a single stick of 8GB memory.

-A GTX 1070

 

Now, I know the memory setup is horrible. It works, but the mix and match will make all the stick run just in single channel. This is a trade off I choose years ago when I needed more memory above all else. However, I am starting to feel the memory is becoming a hampering factor. The memory speed is unfortunaly limited to 1000Mhz and I can't seem to get it higher due the older 3x2GB tripple channel memory.

 

At this point the system is just too old to invest more money into what is outdated technology. I am just wondering: how much is this memory setup hampering overall gaming performance? Am I correct to state the difference is signficant compared to a new PC with similar CPU performance and the same graphics card, but with something like DDR4 3200Mhz performance?

[Mardax007]

I think that if you go for a new system with DDR4-3200 Mhz memory, Ryzen cpu and a b450 motherboard the performance leap will be quite big but it isn't 100% the memory the cpu and motherboard are I think bottlenecking the gpu. I don't know how mutch the memory is bottlenecking but a entire system upgrade(apart from the graficscard) will be worth it. A year a go I went from a 7 year old prebuild to a 800$ new pc and I went from 10 to 60 fps to 100 to 440 fps in minecraft. I think that if you upgrade your gpu can sine and your performance will be better.

[gloop]

Wait for 4th gen ryzen and get a 4600 w/ 16gb 3200MHz CL16 RAM and a B506 board. 

[Turbof1]

3 hours ago, Mardax007 said:

I think that if you go for a new system with DDR4-3200 Mhz memory, Ryzen cpu and a b450 motherboard the performance leap will be quite big but it isn't 100% the memory the cpu and motherboard are I think bottlenecking the gpu. I don't know how mutch the memory is bottlenecking but a entire system upgrade(apart from the graficscard) will be worth it. A year a go I went from a 7 year old prebuild to a 800$ new pc and I went from 10 to 60 fps to 100 to 440 fps in minecraft. I think that if you upgrade your gpu can sine and your performance will be better.

Hmm,

 

So there is more to the cpu just than clock speed and cores? I know it's an old cpu, but given the equal amount of cores/threads and on par clock frequency (after OC), compared to the AMD Ryzen 3600, it should be equal in performance no? The mobo however I do think is too causing a bottleneck.

[Aragorn-]

The whole machine is old, so its difficult to focus on just the memory and say wether its good or bad. Its certainly not helping matters though, and DDR3 is dirt cheap, so i'd be tempted to get two 8gb sticks and remove the 2gb dimms and run it on 3x8.

 

You'd really need to do some benchmarks to see how it performs, i suspect it would surprise a lot of people tbh. 6 cores and hyperthreading, with a solid overclock, has the potential to see it perhaps even beat a 3770k on todays more demanding titles.

[Turbof1]

2 hours ago, Aragorn- said:

The whole machine is old, so its difficult to focus on just the memory and say wether its good or bad. Its certainly not helping matters though, and DDR3 is dirt cheap, so i'd be tempted to get two 8gb sticks and remove the 2gb dimms and run it on 3x8.

 

You'd really need to do some benchmarks to see how it performs, i suspect it would surprise a lot of people tbh. 6 cores and hyperthreading, with a solid overclock, has the potential to see it perhaps even beat a 3770k on todays more demanding titles.

I did that for kicks and giggles. It beats a similarily clocked 3770k by a healthy margin in Cinebench R15. See the video for the 3770k:

I also have to correct myself, it's not a 5650 (which has 12 cores), but a 5675. My CPU got, with a clockspeed of 4375Mhz in the bios, task manager and CPU-Z, on the multi-core test 923 points 970 points (I did a.second test with more time after booting) The single core score is 127, which does get soundly beaten by the 3770k.

 

Unfortunaly it gets heavily beaten by an AMD Ryzen 2 3600, which at 4200Mhz clockspeed gets a 1578 score.

[Aragorn-]

oh i'm sure i'll win in Cinebench, but actual gaming benchmarks would be interesting to see a side by side comparison with a half decent GPU, especially in the games that struggle with a quad core these days.

I've got an old X58 rig that i keep for reasons, but currently its just running a W3565. I've been thinking about getting a 6 core for it for a while now. The prices for the CPU's just feel a little too high to buy on a whim for a machine that i dont really use much though.

 

And yes, theres definitely more to a CPU than clockspeed and cores. Different architectural designs can process different numbers of instructions per clock (IPC). For instance current Zen2 chips are faster than intels 9/10th gen chips at an IPC level, but intel manages to run higher clocks to pull back the advantage. In comparison some older AMD designs like the Phenom were slower than the equivalent intel even when they had a clock speed advantage.

Heres a video comparing an i7-970 (basically what you have) and an i7-8700k, both running at 4ghz:

You can see the newer chip is a decent amount faster.

[Turbof1]

5 hours ago, Aragorn- said:

oh i'm sure i'll win in Cinebench, but actual gaming benchmarks would be interesting to see a side by side comparison with a half decent GPU, especially in the games that struggle with a quad core these days.

I've got an old X58 rig that i keep for reasons, but currently its just running a W3565. I've been thinking about getting a 6 core for it for a while now. The prices for the CPU's just feel a little too high to buy on a whim for a machine that i dont really use much though.

 

And yes, theres definitely more to a CPU than clockspeed and cores. Different architectural designs can process different numbers of instructions per clock (IPC). For instance current Zen2 chips are faster than intels 9/10th gen chips at an IPC level, but intel manages to run higher clocks to pull back the advantage. In comparison some older AMD designs like the Phenom were slower than the equivalent intel even when they had a clock speed advantage.

Heres a video comparing an i7-970 (basically what you have) and an i7-8700k, both running at 4ghz:

You can see the newer chip is a decent amount faster.

The notion about IPC was learnful! Thanks about that. I guess I didn't hear about since the manufacturers aren't too keen on releasing those numbers