SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Here's a surprise. Benchmark test results from Intel Corp. show its new 815E chip set with PC133 SDRAMs beating the performance of its 820 chip set with Direct Rambus memories. Moreover, Intel has posted those unexpected test results on its Web site, not intending to show PC133 SDRAMs beating the Direct Rambus memory format, which is favored by the Santa Clara chip giant.
In nine of 11 standard industry benchmarks the 815E/PC133 synchronous DRAM implementation beat out the 820/Rambus configuration for desktop PCs. The two chip sets and different memory formats were about equal in three of those tests, according to results on Intel's Web site.
Intel was not intending to show a side-by-side comparison of those benchmark results, but instead was attempting to promote the performance of its two chip sets and the different memory formats in separate sections of its Web site. But the benchmark test results were discovered and matched up by an Internet user, who then informed SBN.
Intel used its 933-MHz Pentium III processor in testing both of its chip sets for PC133 SDRAMs and Direct Rambus DRAMs, which are based on the architecture from Rambus Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. Matching up the data from the same 16 benchmarks shows the 815E/PC133 implementation winning in the overwhelming majority of tests, as shown in the table below. The test results can be accessed from Intel's Web site at: http://www.intel.com/procs/perf/PentiumIII.
In Intel's tests, the 815E used 128-megbytes of PC133CL2 SDRAMs from Micron Technologies Inc. The 820 chip set used 128-Mbytes of 800-MHz Direct RDRAMs from Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. for most tests. A 256-Mbyte Rambus memory size was used for the SPECint*2000, SPECfp*2000 and Content Creation Winstone tests.
On Late Friday, an Intel spokesman in Santa Clara confirmed that the tests were conducted by the same company test lab on both chip sets. "We stand behind our test results," he said. The spokesman cautioned that different benchmark tests may be more significant for one chip set and memory than the other, depending on applications.
"You can't always compare the two chip sets across the full range of tests," he added.
Rambus Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., was preparing a response, but no comment had been received by SBN as of late Friday evening. There was no comparative data on four benchmarks, which Intel used for testing the 820/Rambus implementation, but not on the 815E/PC133 SDRAM configuration.
A side-by-side comparison of Intel's test results
| Benchmark tests* |
820/Rambus DRAMs |
815E/PC133 SDRAMs |
815 improvements vs. 820 |
| CPUmark*99--Win*98 |
81.8 |
85 |
+3.9% |
| WinTune* 98 Advanced CPU Integer Test--Win*98 |
235 |
236 |
+0.4% |
| SPECint*2000--Win*2000 |
410 |
-- |
-- |
| SPECint_base*2000--Win*2000 |
407 |
-- |
-- |
| SYSmark*2000--Win*98 |
187 |
191 |
+2.1% |
| SYSmark*2000--Win*2000 |
188 |
192 |
+2.1% |
| Business Winstone*99--Win*98 |
34.7 |
35.1 |
+1.2% |
| Content Creation Winstone*2000--Win*2000 |
50.4 |
51.6 |
2.4% |
| Video*2000-Performance--Win*98 |
603 |
594 |
-1.5% |
| Video*2000-MPEG-2 Encoding--Win*98 |
28.92 |
30.33 |
+4.9% |
| MultimediaMark*99--Win*98 |
2380 |
2412 |
+1.3% |
| 3D WinBench* 2000-Processor Test--Win*98 |
1.85 |
1.92 |
3.8% |
| 3DMark* 2000-CPU Speed Test--Win*98 |
385 |
386 |
+0.3% |
| WinBench* 99-FPU WinMark* 99--Win*98 |
4940 |
4930 |
-0.2% |
| SPECfp*2000--Win*2000 |
305 |
-- |
-- |
| SPECfp_base--Win*2000 |
295 |
-- |
-- |
| JMark* 2.0 Processor Test--Win*98 |
1755 |
1743 |
-0.7% |
| SYSmark* J--Win*98 |
1838 |
1929 |
+5.0% |
*Performed with 933-MHz Pentium III processor
Source: Intel's Web site |
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