Intel Haswell DDR3 Memory Performance Impact On Graphics

For starting a new week of Linux benchmarking at Phoronix, some more results to push along Monday morning are performance test results looking at Intel's Haswell Linux graphics performance when manipulating the DDR3 memory frequencies. These results show the impact of Intel Haswell graphics on Linux when running the system memory at DDR3-800, DDR3-1066, DDR3-1333, and DDR3-1600 MHz frequencies... The performance difference of the latest-generation Intel graphics may surprise you.

While I've published Linux graphics benchmark results in the past looking at the AMD APU performance at different memory frequencies, this is my first time running any Intel Haswell Linux graphics tests with varying memory bandwidth. For this brief and straightforward testing, an Intel Core i3 4130 processor with HD Graphics 4400 was used from an Intel DH87RL motherboard.

This system is presently in the process of being commissioned for per-commit Intel Mesa driver benchmarking and is loaded with 2GB of CSX DDR3-1600MHz memory. Out of curiosity sake, this weekend I ran the memory tests when manipulating the system memory bandwidth from the Intel Visual BIOS on the Intel Haswell H87 motherboard. The CPU frequencies remained the same during testing as did other system settings. This testing is mainly for information purposes for those that may be trying to buy cheap (and slower) memory (or recycle older RAM from systems) when assembling a low-end Haswell rig.

A variety of OpenGL graphics tests were run at each memory frequency using the automated Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.