Is 6GB enough...

JDawggS316 · Mar 28, 2009

I have an Intel Core i7 CPU on an ASUS PT6 board that can handle up to at least 12GB. Is 6GB kind of the cap until Windows 7 will utilize more memory? I have Vista 64-bit.

If I were to go to 12GB would there be much of a gain in performance that's noticeable?

Charr · Mar 28, 2009

I wouldn't go with 12GB of RAM, unless you plan on using RAM disks. For everyday stuff and gaming, 6GB is way more than enough.

JDawggS316 · Mar 28, 2009

Yeah that's what I was thinking.

What about going from 6GB 1066MHz to 6GB of 1600MHz?

I'm wondering about this because I do a lot of gaming etc.

Malakai · Mar 28, 2009

That is a large increase in speed, should be noticable. I believe you will need to fsb overclock your i7 to get the memory going that fast, 1333 is max standard speed iirc.

DDR3 at 1066 is actually slower than DDR2 at that same speed due to increased latencies; barring any impact of triple channel bonus.

I consider 3-4gb to be standard, 6-8 is a lot of breathing room that will last quite awhile, more than 8 is just crazy excessive or special purpose. 12 for instance I think is a waste, by the time your sys and apps actually need that much ram, there will be (possibly much) faster ram available, and the cost of what you can buy now will be much lower.

JDawggS316 · Mar 28, 2009

So would you say 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz may prove to be faster than 6GB of DDR3 1066MHz?

Strages · Mar 28, 2009

Doesn't make much sense to go with 4GB of DDR3-1600 for i7 as that wouldn't be triple channel. To take advantage of triple channel, your choices are going to be 3GB (3x1GB), 6GB (6x1GB or 3x2GB), or 12GB (6x2GB or 3x4GB). Go with 3x2GB of DDR3-1600 and be happy

.

JDawggS316 · Mar 28, 2009

Hhmmm....I've learned a great deal here today.

Thank you all very much

Strages · Mar 28, 2009

To answer your question though, no, there is no practical limit to the amount of RAM Vista 64-bit can address. Technically, the limit is 16 exabytes (17.18 billion GB), but I think hardware is limited to 128TB or something for now.

JDawggS316 · Mar 28, 2009

Now that's unreal. I hadn't even considered such possibilities as exabytes lol

Badbonji · Mar 29, 2009

Have you got the ram yet? On newegg there are good deals on 1600Mhz ram for $100 (6gb that is) and good timings. The ram will be helpful in overclocking allowing a lot more flexibility for the bclk. There are pretty huge jumps for memory speeds to choose from, at 200 bclk it is 400Mhz as even multis for memory. (For 200Mhz I think my options were 1200, 1600, 2000, etc...) which on a 920 the only way to overclock is the bclk. 6Gb is all you will need.

Are you overclocking? If you are then 1600Mhz, if not 1333Mhz is better than 1066Mhz.

aero94 · Mar 29, 2009

Wow.. Exabytes.. that's hard to even comprehend lol.

JDawggS316 · Mar 29, 2009

Dispite the title of this forum I do not plan on overclocking my memory :-/

And what do you mean 1333MHz is better than 1600MHz?

I'm all ears if it saves me a buck or two :santa:

JDawggS316 · Mar 30, 2009

Well I did go ahead with a purchase from Newegg.com:

OCZ Platinum XTC PC12800 6GB 1600MHz

Malakai · Mar 30, 2009

JDawggS316 said:
So would you say 4GB of DDR3 1600MHz may prove to be faster than 6GB of DDR3 1066MHz?

If I understand what your saying correctly, then yes in that case the 4gb would be much faster. Faster dual channel vs slower triple channel.

I also think 3x 2gb sticks of ddr3 (1333 or better) is the way to go. By the time you need more than 6gb you will probably want something faster. Check timings and voltages required to achieve those timings before purchase. I priced out a i7 core before I decided on a phenom II instead, I was going to get these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231225
That way you have headroom to either run 9-9-9@1600+, or use em at stock 1333 at low timings and lower voltage.

And always glad to help, thats what this forum exists for! I've been away awhile but I learned everything that has kept me earning income and enjoying pc gaming here at o/c. :attn:

Enablingwolf · Mar 30, 2009

Malakai said:
I consider 3-4gb to be standard, 6-8 is a lot of breathing room that will last quite awhile, more than 8 is just crazy excessive or special purpose. 12 for instance I think is a waste, by the time your sys and apps actually need that much ram, there will be (possibly much) faster ram available, and the cost of what you can buy now will be much lower.

My wife's i7 has 12gigs in it. It is nice to have that much. More of a wow factor than why it has that much.

It does make for a speedy Vista though. The whole OS is cached in RAM. When it had a dinky 3gigs in it. The monitor showed all but 50megs was being used for caching. Which I was ok with that. Since unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Back in November of last year, when the machine was brought online. I asked my wife what she wanted for her birthday. Well she got that machine and it was filled up and has a 32 monitor with dual GPU cards to match that vulgarism.

Right now .. 6 gigs is the sweet spot for the i7 triple channel(3gigs is just fine). Like for two channel RAM, 4gigs is the sweet spot. Anything more and you have a specific need for it or a goal.

Malakai · Mar 30, 2009

Enablingwolf said:
My wife's i7 has 12gigs in it. It is nice to have that much. More of a wow factor than why it has that much.

It does make for a speedy Vista though. The whole OS is cached in RAM. When it had a dinky 3gigs in it. The monitor showed all but 50megs was being used for caching. Which I was ok with that. Since unused RAM is wasted RAM.
Back in November of last year, when the machine was brought online. I asked my wife what she wanted for her birthday. Well she got that machine and it was filled up and has a 32 monitor with dual GPU cards to match that vulgarism.

Right now .. 6 gigs is the sweet spot for the i7 triple channel(3gigs is just fine). Like for two channel RAM, 4gigs is the sweet spot. Anything more and you have a specific need for it or a goal.

It is nice tho isn't it! =)
Vista definitely loves it. Since I was comfortable getting rid of page file going from 4 to 8, there was a small but noticeable increase in vista speed. Mostly cause drive thrashing is practically nonexistent now!

Enablingwolf · Mar 30, 2009

It is nice to have that much, but the price was not as nice. I think I spent like $500 on RAM to propagate all the slots. The prices did drop some since I did that..

The 12gig kits runs about $231 on the egg now.

Strages · Mar 30, 2009

Just to add a bit more detail: 4GB of DDR3-1600 isn't NECESSARILY "faster" than 6GB of DDR3-1066. It really depends on your definition. If you mean clock speed, then it's trivially faster because 1600 MHz > 1066 MHz, but from a bandwidth standpoint, no, the DDR3-1600 is not "faster" because the 6GB of DDR3-1066 would be, presumably, configured in triple channel vs. dual channel, which would offer substantially more bandwidth. Not to mention that in RAM-intensive situations, faster RAM will NEVER make up for having MORE RAM - if that makes sense.

Also, I was incorrect earlier about the 16 exabytes - it's actually 2 exabytes. The limit is 2^64 bits (2 exabytes) not 2^64 bytes (16 exabytes). At that point, it doesn't really matter, but I thought I would correct myself out of principle.

Malakai · Mar 30, 2009

Enablingwolf said:
It is nice to have that much, but the price was not as nice. I think I spent like $500 on RAM to propagate all the slots. The prices did drop some since I did that..

The 12gig kits runs about $231 on the egg now.

This is why I am still a fan of ddr2. Its so cheap it practically populates your slots for free =)

Strages said:
Just to add a bit more detail: 4GB of DDR3-1600 isn't NECESSARILY "faster" than 6GB of DDR3-1066. It really depends on your definition. If you mean clock speed, then it's trivially faster because 1600 MHz > 1066 MHz, but from a bandwidth standpoint, no, the DDR3-1600 is not "faster" because the 6GB of DDR3-1066 would be, presumably, configured in triple channel vs. dual channel, which would offer substantially more bandwidth. Not to mention that in RAM-intensive situations, faster RAM will NEVER make up for having MORE RAM - if that makes sense.

Also, I was incorrect earlier about the 16 exabytes - it's actually 2 exabytes. The limit is 2^64 bits (2 exabytes) not 2^64 bytes (16 exabytes). At that point, it doesn't really matter, but I thought I would correct myself out of principle.

Dual channel 1600 is going to be MUCH faster than triple channel 1066. Just fire up your sandra 2009 and check out the comparison systems in the memory tests. The benchmarks actually don't show that triple channel is that big a performance increase. AMD is only going with dual channel ddr3 in their next gen, as their testing didn't show the increase to be worth the added complexity of building in triple channel. DDR3-1600 and faster is epic fast no matter how many channels =)

Sandra has a dual channel and triple channel ddr3 at the same speed in its benchmark comparison setups on the i7 platform, and it too shows little improvement going from dual to triple channel. More of a gimmick IMO

Just fyi. An actual increase in the mhz of the bus yields proportional increase in bandwidth, but triple channel is NOT x3, nor is dual channel x2 the bandwidth in reality. Nowhere near it actually. Dual channel is generally considered to be ~+12% over single, going to triple from dual is even less.

Evilsizer · Mar 30, 2009

that is the ironic part, even though faster in dual channel. tri-channel at even DDR3-1333 matches DDR3-1600 in dual. as you also forget you have a another 64bit lane that is in use for tri channel, dual = 128bit,tri=192bit. what you loose in speed you make up for by having a wider data path.

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1...y_analysis_can_dual_channel_cut_it/index.html <-compares DDR3-1066 dual/tri to DDR3-1600 in dual/tri

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