Size Vs Quantity...

Howitzer

Howitzer

Howitzer

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Joined
10 Mar 2010
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London, UK
Hey peeps, just a quicky;

I'm looking to sell off my Geil Black Dragon - It has stupid clock times and nowhere sells more new anymore -___-

So as a bit of an upgrade itch I was looking at Possibly getting 12GB just for bragging rights lol.

Thing is, is there a performance difference between 3x4Gb sticks and 6x2Gb sticks?

The only problem I see with getting the 4Gb is they tend to have tall heat fins which I don't think will fit under my large cpu heatsink... so was wondering if I went for shorter 2Gb sticks whether I would be sacrificing performance due to using more slots?

I know, I know, at 12Gb a difference won't really be noticable I guess. But anyways... :p
 
i thought the more sticks you had the better, as in if you had 6x2GB stick and were using 3GB of ram, it would be able to use 500mb on each stick, but if you are using 3x4GB sticks it would be using 1GB of each stick, therefore there would be a slower transfer rate. but it would be sooo marginal you wouldnt notice it.
thats my understanding anyway.
 
In terms of pure RAM performance - they are the effectively the same, both run fine in triple channel mode.

However, by using six RAM sticks instead of three you put a lot more strain on the memory controller in the i7 CPU. This can make CPU overclocking much more tricky and can reduce the stable RAM frequency.

There are also low profile 3x4GB kits available and they are well priced, have a look at this one.
 
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I believe that as long as you're populating with multiples of three, the RAM will run in triple channel mode.

As said, the onboard memory controller will be stressed more with more sticks, and so will the northbridge (to a lesser extent). I always use 3 sticks on x58 boards for that reason.
 
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