[ON TOPIC] HELP: Getting lousy memory throughput from Abit KD7

[Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>]

Below is a message I wrote earlier to the list, but I didn't see any 
reply.

Since that time, I installed Windows and ran SiSoft SANDRA to test my 
memory throughput.  The result I got was a little over 2300 MiB/sec, 
which is pretty much what I'd expect.  On the other hand, STREAM shows 
me getting about half that while I'm running Linux.

This suggests to me that there is one of these possibilities which is 
contributing to the poor performance under Linux:

1) Linux is not programming the KT400 chipset properly and is thus not 
getting the throughput it could.
2) SANDRA uses instructions (SSE, etc) which are able to access memory 
more efficiently than whatever STREAM is using.
3) SANDRA inflates its scores to make people feel better.
4) Linux has not properly set up the CPU caches.


Given the speed of the processor and the fact that usually, most memory 
access hits the cache, I would expect the memory bus to be saturated 
during the test.  The KT400 does some amount of read-ahead, and since 
the data can be read out of a cache line much faster than it can be 
loaded into the cache, I wouldn't expect much time delay between when 
one line is read and the next one has a miss.  Is the latency so great? 
  What about the out-of-order execution of the CPU?


What I want to know is this:

Am I getting realistic throughput for what STREAM does?

What is SANDRA doing that lets it get such high scores when STREAM does not?


Thanks.




Timothy Miller wrote:
> I recently bought an Abit KD7, and I'm having a few problems with it.  I
> hope someone can please help me with them.
> 
> According to the BIOS screen, the board model I have is
> KT400-8235-6A6LYA1AC-DN.  I have an Athlon XP 2800+ (barton core,
> 333mhz fsb) with 1 GIG of PC2700 DDR.  The board has AwardBIOS.
> 
> I'm running Red Hat 9 with their latest kernel (something like 2.4.20-18).
> 
> The Corsair memory I'm using turns out to be from SpecTek, which uses
> Micron silicon.  I called SpecTek to get a datasheet, and they
> directed me to the data sheet for Micron MT46V64M4TG-6T.
> 
> I use the following settings for memory:
> 
> CAS latency: 2.5
> Bank Interleave: 4
> Trp: 3T
> Tras: 7T
> Trcd: 3T
> Drive strength and controls are all Auto
> DRAM Access: 3T
> Enhance DRAM Performance: Disabled
> DRAM Command Rate: 1T
> Write Recovery Time: 3T
> tWTR: 1T
> 
> The problem that I encounter is that I seem to be getting unusually low 
> memory throughput. Using "memtest86", I get 665mb/sec. Using STREAM 
> under Linux, I get closer to 1040 mb/sec peak. Doing some searches on 
> google has revealed that most people get closer to their peak bandwidth, 
> so, I should be expecting at least 2400 from STREAM, judging from the 
> numbers others are getting. I know in the real world, you never get 
> peak, but in synthetic tests, I should not be getting half the rated 
> bandwidth.
> 
> I have already tried flashing the latest BIOS but the only result was 
> that "Fast CPU command decode" option now causes the system to not POST 
> (It didn't before).
> 
> If anyone could please help me to figure out what is slowing things
> down, I would appreciate it very much.
> 
> I have a feeling this isn't a Linux-related issue, but you never know. 
> Does STREAM report very low throughput compares to, say, SiSOFT SANDRA? 
>  I haven't tried SANDRA because I don't want to install Windows.
> 
> 
> Thank you.
> 
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