amd fanboy needs memory help!

[THRiLL KiLL]

so i finally got a intel system. and i am thinking of making this my main rig.



here is what

icore7 920 / gigabyte x58 udr3 motherboard / 6 gb of ram (3x 2048mb, unknown speed/ timings)

I am still waiting on good old slow ups to deliver it to me.


from what i have read the icore will be a bit slower on gaming (then my current am3 p2 965be) , but for encoding and other things it should be a bit faster.

the last time i owned a intel as a main system, was a p2 400.

so, i see that intel uses triple channel memory.

so i have 2 questions.

1. will i see a difference between 8gb of dual channel memory vs 6gb of triple channel memory? (windows 7)


2. i see memory is sold as dual channel kits and triple channel kits. is there a difference between the two? as i see dual channel is cheaper, and i can pick up 2 sets of dual channel memory (and throw away one stick)? that is if i go for 12gb of memory?


Thanks!

 

[newtekie1]

1.) Probably not. The 6GB Triple Channel will be faster, but not noticeably, until you fill it.

2.) Yes, you can pick up the dual-channel kits and throw away one stick.

Of course, you can also just run dual-channel with the Core i7 as well, it is capable of Triple-Channel, but it isn't required, you can run dual-channel with little speed penalty.

Edit: Nevermind about the dual-channel comment. It seems Gigabyte designed the board totally shitty and only included 4 RAM slots. So if you use 4 sticks, you actually get single-channel. There should be 6 slots...

Edit2: Ok, there are 2 different UDR3 boards, one with 4 memory slots and one with 6. If you got the one with 6, then you can run 4 sticks and get dual-channel. If you got the one with 4, then you should run 3 sticks to get triple channel, because otherwise you get single channel, and you don't want that.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

thanks for the heads up. i found only the cheap mobo /w 4 slots.

i know with my luck that will be the board i am getting.

I am also happy i can get the dual channel kits ( and throw one away). as i can save 25+ $$

 

[newtekie1]

thanks for the heads up. i found only the cheap mobo /w 4 slots.

i know with my luck that will be the board i am getting.

I am also happy i can get the dual channel kits ( and throw one away). as i can save 25+ $$

After reading the manual for the board with 4 slots, it seems that if you populate all 4 slots, you still get triple channel, but the 4th stick will likely run as single channel. So once you fill the 6GB, the remaining 2GB will be at much slower single channel speed. But I guess that is still much faster than paging to the disk...

So, I'd use all 4 sticks either way. Sorry for the confusion in the earlier post, I was writing it as I was researching the boards.

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

found out i got the better of the two boards.. so 6 slots.. and i have enough 2gb sticks for 12gb of memory.. so all is good

thanks for the help!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

triple channel will give more memory bandwidth then dual channel

and in gaming it will slaughter your 965BE.

Bad Company 2
GTA IV
Shogun 2
Star Craft II

among others will see a decent performance bump,

if you play WoW that will get a very large performance bump,

but yea

theres no major difference between dual channel and triple channel kits they just put 1 more matching stick in the package,

so if you grab 2 kits of 2x2gb you can just sell off 1 stick or use it in something else and go triple channel just make sure to keep the system running triple channel that is after all one of the major selling points the extra memory bandwidth lol