Memory performance

The 750a gets off to a good start in our memory subsystem tests, but then all three of these chipsets share the same integrated Phenom memory controller. Any differences here can be chalked up to how each motherboard maker has chosen to tune the processor's on-die memory controller, and it looks like XFX has slightly favored bandwidth over latency.

Motherboards don't always handle four DIMMs gracefully, so we popped an additional two memory modules into each system for another round of tests.

Adding DIMMs doesn't change the picture much. The 750a's memory bandwidth is even greater here, and its access latency exactly matches that of the nForce 780a.

The following latency graphs are a little indulgent, so I won't be offended if you skip them. They show access latencies across multiple block and step sizes, painting a fuller picture of memory controller performance with each chipset. Yellow represents L1 cache, light orange is L2, red is L3, and dark orange is main memory.

As one might expect from systems that share the same on-die Phenom memory controller, the access latency picture looks pretty similar from one chipset to the next.