Firmware and software can influence DRAM efficiency through allocation, alignment, access order and channel/bank mapping. Huge pages can reduce translation pressure, but they do not by themselves guarantee a higher DRAM row-hit rate; that depends on physical placement, controller mapping and the workload's access sequence.
Controller QoS: prioritize latency-sensitive traffic (CPU) over bulk (DMA) when row buffer is contested.
Profile row-hit, idle-bank and conflict rates per traffic class, then interpret them with the address map and latency objective.
Video frame buffers: stride matters for bank mapping.
Low-power and refresh settings can change availability and latency; quantify the effect for the selected mode rather than assuming a fixed bandwidth loss.