ZorRam vs. Radeon Memory: Speed test

[HammerD]

HI All, Elbox was kind enough to send me their latest drivers, which automatically adds some Zorro RAM from your Radeon graphics card.  Since I also have a ZorRam card in the A4000, I thought it would be interesting to do a test.

Machine:

Amiga 4000cr (buster 11), Phase-5 Cyberstorm MK3 with 060@66.67 MHz
Deneb USB card
RTL 8029 NIC
Indivision AGA
Mediator 4000Di
Sapphire Radeon 9250 PCI 256MB
ZorRam 256MB
AmigaOS 3.9 BB3

First, showconfig:

5.System39:> showconfig
PROCESSOR:      CPU 68060/68060fpu/68060mmu
CUSTOM CHIPS:   AA NTSC Alice (id=$0033), AA Lisa (id=$00F8)
VERS:   Kickstart version 45.57, Exec version 45.20, Disk version 45.5
RAM:    Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $8000000-$BF7FFFF (63.5 meg) <-- Cyberstorm Memory
        Node type $A, Attributes $405 (FAST), at $70000000-$7FFFFFFF (256.0 meg) <-- ZorRAM memory
        Node type $A, Attributes $2005 (FAST), at $52000000-$57EFFFFF (95.0 meg) <-- Radeon Memory
        Node type $A, Attributes $703 (CHIP), at $4000-$1FFFFF (~2.0 meg) <-- Chip Memory
BOARDS:
 Board (Index Information Ltd):   Prod=2206/33($89E/$21)
     (@$40000000, size 16meg, subsize same)
 Board (Index Information Ltd):   Prod=2206/161($89E/$A1)
     (@$50000000, size 256meg, subsize same)
 Board (unidentified):   Prod=3643/16($E3B/$10)
     (@$60000000, size 16meg, subsize same)
 Board + ROM (HD?) (unidentified):   Prod=3643/19($E3B/$13) (@$E90000 64K)
 RAM (unidentified):   Prod=3643/32($E3B/$20)
     (@$70000000, size 256meg, subsize autosized Mem)
 Board + ROM (HD?) (phase 5):   Prod=8512/100($2140/$64) (@$F01058 128K)


Test of Radeon Memory, added as 95MB Fast Ram:

5.System39:> bustest addr=53000000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $53000000  readw     832.9 ns   normal       2.4 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  readl     840.9 ns   normal       4.8 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  readm     841.7 ns   normal       4.8 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writew    469.7 ns   normal       4.3 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writel    468.9 ns   normal       8.5 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writem    469.1 ns   normal       8.5 * 10^6 byte/s

Test of ZorRAM, added as 256MB Fast Ram:

5.System39:> bustest addr=71000000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $71000000  readw     283.1 ns   normal       7.1 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readl     561.8 ns   normal       7.1 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readm     560.6 ns   normal       7.1 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writew    439.6 ns   normal       4.5 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writel    876.1 ns   normal       4.6 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writem    880.7 ns   normal       4.5 * 10^6 byte/s

I was a bit surprised at the ZorRAM "write" numbers, I thought it would be higher.  Perhaps I am doing something wrong?

I am also booting from a 4GB SanDisk "Cruzer" USB stick, here are the diskspeed results, using FFS on my Sys: partition.  Using Deneb DMA.

5.System39:> diskspeedkb read
Diskspeed 1.3 (20 Apr 2003) - Programmed by John Hendrikx, updated by Jörg Strohmayer

Volume System39: 607830 blocks (593 MB), 1024 bytes per block.
The volume has 1024 buffers and the DosType is 0x444f5303.

Read data using   65536 byte buffer  :  4551 kB/second

Access time is pretty quick, icons come up as fast as on a SCSI drive connected to the MK3 UW SCSI controller.  And of course it's totally silent

[HammerD]

Hammer
Very interesting thanks! So, the radeon ram is just like regular zorro3 fast ram?

Yes, under OS 3.9 it shows up automtically.  All I had to do was install the updated Elbox drivers, which they sent me via e-mail.  After a reboot it automatically showed up.

Of course I had to have a Radeon card I think you need a 128MB or 256MB Radeon in order for it to be able to use the extra memory.

Right now 32MB is assigned to Picasso 96, and 95MB got mapped as fast ram. So still some missing  You can adjust the Picasso 96 allocation higher if you wish.

I'm not sure Picasso 96 actually uses it, though.

[HammerD]

The ZorRAM write speed is too low for the system tested in. Darren posted this also to a1k.org, we try to reproduce the numbers he measured for ZorRAM.

Write access should be at least 7MB/s.

Any other volunteers to check their ZorRAM system? Would be nice to have a wide basis of results to improve statistics :-)

Michael

Hi Michael, I repeated the test, fresh reboot, but this time turned cpu caches off with "cpu nocache" command.

Results:

First. Radeon Zorro memory:

5.System39:> bustest addr=53000000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $53000000  readw     859.1 ns   normal       2.3 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  readl     867.6 ns   normal       4.6 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  readm     852.9 ns   normal       4.7 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writew    475.4 ns   normal       4.2 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writel    479.2 ns   normal       8.3 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $53000000  writem    476.1 ns   normal       8.4 * 10^6 byte/s


And ZorRAM:


5.System39:> bustest addr=71000000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $71000000  readw     634.2 ns   normal       3.2 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readl     634.6 ns   normal       6.3 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readm     616.3 ns   normal       6.5 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writew    405.1 ns   normal       4.9 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writel    406.9 ns   normal       9.8 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writem    384.3 ns   normal      10.4 * 10^6 byte/s
5.System39:>

ZorRam is as expected, now, with write speeds.  I even got 10.6 on one test.

Radeon Memory write speeds seem unaffected with or without cpu cache.

Too bad, because normally you wish to run with cpu caches "on". Otherwise the 060 is slow

Anyway, interesting test.

In other tests, we found using "write-thru" cache was faster on ZorRAM.