i7 - Why use tri-channel RAM?

pswfps · 6 Mar 2011 at 15:07

Hi, so I just got myself an i7 920 D0 for a good price and have been fiddling around with different configurations.

One thing I noticed is that the system seems to perform better when using dual channel RAM than with triple channel.

I measured performance using AIDA64. I found that in dual channel mode the memory latency was improved by about 16% while read/write/copy speeds were more or less unchanged. The improved latency seemed to improve the Cinebench 11.5 OpenGL test by around 13%. I'm assuming games would be similarly improved but I haven't tested this.

So, unless you need to run colossal amounts of RAM, why would anybody choose to run triple channel over dual in a desktop PC?

paradisiac · 6 Mar 2011 at 15:44

will it even be running in dual channel? i thought if it was a triple channel mobo, then with just 2 sticks installed they would run in single channel mode, might be wrong though. does seem confusing how you get better results from a triple channel cpu with 2 sticks of ram though.

leinad amme · 6 Mar 2011 at 17:32

:S i'm pretty sure ddr2 ram wasnt compatible with i7 motherboards :O i'd love to be proved wrong not that i want to use it its just .... intresting.

Judgeneo · 6 Mar 2011 at 17:37

leinad amme said:
:S i'm pretty sure ddr2 ram wasnt compatible with i7 motherboards :O i'd love to be proved wrong not that i want to use it its just .... intresting.

He didn't say he say using DDR2, just dual channel ram

Marvin · 6 Mar 2011 at 17:43

I doubt a monumental amount that any difference will be noticed in games. Sure, Cinebench will show it up but that's a synthetic benchmark designed to show the slightest differences. Games benefit from low latency and high speed, but not bandwidth so much, so it depends on usage. The X58 platform's main territory was always encoding and such, while P55 was as good if not slightly better for gaming (though had PCI-E drawbacks).

leinad amme · 6 Mar 2011 at 17:48

Judgeneo said:
He didn't say he say using DDR2, just dual channel ram

ah my bad

Br4d · 6 Mar 2011 at 18:07

Triple Channel Memory just gives more Bandwidth. No Real need over Decent Speed DDR3 in Dual Channel for gaming. But i'd Reccomend running Triple Channel.

ishoeyi · 6 Mar 2011 at 18:17

i think the triple channel was to allow more bandwidth to allow future advancement of the cpu on that platform.

i believe an 8core cpu will come out on this platform.
dont quote me on it tho, not 100% sure.

leinad amme · 6 Mar 2011 at 18:22

deleted post- sorry

Arthur Hucksake · 7 Mar 2011 at 10:05

On an i7 950 things were a bit snappier in day to day use with trip channel over dual, few fps difference in some games. Not what it's cut out to be for the average user although some encoding tasks were 10-15 mins quicker. (Whoopy doooo, seeing as they took over an hour to start with)

paradisiac · 7 Mar 2011 at 10:09

Arthur Hucksake said:
On an i7 950 things were a bit snappier in day to day use with trip channel over dual, few fps difference in some games. Not what it's cut out to be for the average user although some encoding tasks were 10-15 mins quicker. (Whoopy doooo, seeing as they took over an hour to start with)

was the i7 950 designed for 'the average user'? i thought it was more of a high end chip, so 10-15mins per hour, times that by an 8 hour day is nearly an hour and halfs more encoding, which can be quite a lot of money to some people.

mothermachine · 7 Mar 2011 at 10:19

Arthur Hucksake said:
On an i7 950 things were a bit snappier in day to day use with trip channel over dual, few fps difference in some games. Not what it's cut out to be for the average user although some encoding tasks were 10-15 mins quicker. (Whoopy doooo, seeing as they took over an hour to start with)

15 mins shaved off a 1 hour render is extremely good... even 1 min shaved off a 1 hour render is worth it. can save you a huge amount of money in the long term, or even short term.

Arthur Hucksake · 7 Mar 2011 at 10:25

I said "over an hour". Couldn't quote exact times, sometimes it shaved 10-15 minutes of an encode that could have been upto 3 hours but then you would have other variables involved. From a gaming perspective, it didn't make a tremendous difference.

Don't get me wrong, I prefered it. I'd take the 6GB over the 4GB anyday. But I can see how going for 8GB ram and losing the triple channel could be beneficial.

hernaldo · 9 Mar 2011 at 19:28

ishoeyi said:
i think the triple channel was to allow more bandwidth to allow future advancement of the cpu on that platform.

i believe an 8core cpu will come out on this platform.
dont quote me on it tho, not 100% sure.

Sorry, had to quote you. Never heard anything about that before?

andyr · 11 Mar 2011 at 19:50

You can run two sticks , well i did on my x58 board as the third stick developed a problem and it wasnt until i noticed it under system that i realized there was an issue , else i would never would have known the difference.

pswfps · 15 Mar 2011 at 17:24

I can understand that very memory intensive apps would benefit from a 192bit RAM bus but why would the actual access latency be so much worse for triple channel?

JonJ678 · 17 Mar 2011 at 22:10

I'm fairly sure introducing triple channel ram is related to dual socket boards, the idea is there should be sufficient bandwidth for one cpu to access data stored in the other cpu's ram.

On a single socket board it's just a nice way to increase how much ram you have available, 6x2gb is more than 4x2gb.