Core 2 Duo: Effects Of Memory Timings

Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0:

For our Photoshop Elements test, we used a selection of 400 3MP photographs taken in a variety of surroundings using the batch file processing function in the Elements Editor. We performed all of the auto fixes, including Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Colour and Sharpen before resizing the image to 640x480 and saving as a high quality JPEG.

There were slight improvements when tightening memory timings on both the Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6400 processors. The E6400 appeared to benefit the most from tighter memory timings, as was the case in SuperPI 2M.

Xvid Encoding:

We tested video encoding performance using VirtualDub-MPEG version 1.6.15 and a multithreaded version of the Xvid codec, along with the LAME MT MP3 encoder for encoding audio. We did a two-pass encode of a 15-minute 276MB digital TV recording with a target file size of 100MB.

When using 3.0-3-3-9 memory timings, the Core 2 Duo E6600 was able to reduce the Xvid encoding time by eight seconds - that's a 1% performance improvement over the course of our benchmark - the encoding time differences will be enhanced with larger video files. The Core 2 Duo E6400 was in a similar boat - the performance difference between 4.0-4-4-12 and 3.0-3-3-9 was around 1% in favour of the tighter timings, while the looser 5.0-5-5-15 timings resulted in another 1% performance deficit.