Have I downgraded, Tri Channel to Dual

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This might be a silly question, Im currently running X58 MB with 6GB of Tri-Channel Ram. With the upgrade to IVY in mind I have purchased 16GB (4 sticks) of Dual Channel Ram with the intention of using 12GB (3 sticks) in my current system and upgrading the MB and CPU when IVY is released and dropping the extra stick in.

So the question is have I just downgraded my current ram by doing so, is there any difference between Tri and Dual is or it just the platform it runs on?
 
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if you're only using 3 sticks then your board will carry on working in tri channel, all you've done is left 1 stick standing, a dual channel kit or a tri channel kit can contain the same memory just 3 sticks or 2, or 4.. for example I bought a dual channel kit plus an extra stick to get me a tri channel kit.

So basically no you haven't, there's no actual difference in the specific sticks in a tri or dual channel kit, there's just more or less of them.

Either way it'll make absolutely sod all difference to real world usage. Even if you put all 4 in and had dual channel you'd get a bigger boost going to 16gb dual over 12gb tri. In fact chances are there's be no perceiveable difference going any higher than 4gb in day to day usage.
 
ram makes very little difference for most users these days

it never did! I've been saying this for ages, I remember back in the ddr days I spent an absolute fortune on some CAS2 RAM and managed to shave all over about 0.5s off my superpi 1mb time which at the time was about 25s (and that was very good!)
 
This review compares a X58/Nahalem system (triple channel memory) and a Sandy Bridge System (dual channel memory) both in synthetic memory tests and real-world applications.

In the synthetic tests the triple channel X58 does better in some, however, in real-world tests like this and this (with all CPUs clocked at 3GHz) the sandy Bridge system is still faster.
 
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