Intel Quad-Core Memory Performance

One of the many benefits of Fully Buffered Dual Inline Memory Modules is the ability to have up to six memory channels per memory controller. Each memory channel can also support up to eight memory modules. With that said the total number of possible modules is 48 (permitting the motherboard can handle that much), but how do the numbers of memory channels in use affect the performance of Intel's new quad-core Clovertown processor? With last month's introduction of the Intel Xeon 5300 Clovertown series we have decided to look again at Intel's FB-DIMM memory performance. In this article we not only look at the pure memory bandwidth but we also see how it correlates to real world gains as we time the compilation of the Linux 2.6.19 kernel as well as running rounds of Enemy Territory and Quake 4.

If you are interested in our original Intel DDR2 FB-DIMM Performance benchmarks with our technology preview it is available here. Our CPU benchmarks from the Intel Xeon 5300 (Clovertown) series can be read here. As we had shared in that launch day preview, the Xeon 5300 series takes a memory beating compared to the Xeon 5000 and 5100 with four cores fighting for memory access.