Would I get a performance loss with 4 banks of ram?

BlizzardX · 5 May 2006 at 10:10

I have an epox nforce 3 ultra mobo currently populated with 2GB of ram (2 x 1 gb sticks). I have a spare 1 gb (2 x 512mb sticks) lying around and was wondering if I would get a performance loss by installing those other 2 sticks to give a total of 3gb in dual channel, or would I have a similar performance bearing in mind that they are all 3200 rated.

Thanks

vanandjuanunited · 5 May 2006 at 10:11

Will take a hit of 5-10% supposedly as you can only run 2t. So the story goes.

BlizzardX · 5 May 2006 at 10:23

Ah ok... Just had a dig around on the internet and apparantly newcastles 3200 cores didn't have good memory controllers and so could only run 4 sticks at 2t, where as the newer cores seem to be fine... Can anyone confirm this?

Minstadave · 5 May 2006 at 10:43

BlizzardX said:
Ah ok... Just had a dig around on the internet and apparantly newcastles 3200 cores didn't have good memory controllers and so could only run 4 sticks at 2t, where as the newer cores seem to be fine... Can anyone confirm this?

Nope thats not right.

With 4x512mb or 4x1gb:

Newcastle/Winchester - Defaults to 333mhz 2T

Venice/San Diego/ X2 - Defaults to 400mhz 2T

Running with 4 banks populated means you will have to run 2T (apart from on the DFI RDx200 which is magic).

The older cores default to 333mhz, the newer cores can manage a full 400Mhz. This is only the default though, in most cases you can just up the divider back to 400Mhz, my winchester ran at DDR500 2-2-2-5 2T with 4x512mb modules. You won't be able to run 2T in any circumstances though (apart from with the RDX200).

BlizzardX · 5 May 2006 at 10:45

Ah thanks, that makes more sence. Would that 5-10% performance drop warrant the installation of that extra gig I wonder...

Minstadave · 5 May 2006 at 10:46

BlizzardX said:
Ah thanks, that makes more sence. Would that 5-10% performance drop warrant the installation of that extra gig I wonder...

5-10% is probably an overestimation, in the latest games (esp BF2/Oblivion etc..) the extra RAM will easily be worth the drop to 2T.

BlizzardX · 5 May 2006 at 10:55

Excellent thanks, I shall install this tonight then :-)

subxero · 5 May 2006 at 11:12

Minstadave said:
5-10% is probably an overestimation, in the latest games (esp BF2/Oblivion etc..) the extra RAM will easily be worth the drop to 2T.

Agreed, 5-10% is a bit of an exaggeration, benchmark it and realistically the hit is more like 2-3% tops but just in the difference between 1 and 2T

VoG · 5 May 2006 at 11:44

tbh, unless your a rampant benchmark junkie you'd be really hard pushed to notice the difference between 4 sticks at 1T & 4 sticks at 2T in day to day use/gaming.

BlizzardX · 8 May 2006 at 15:05

Right, having just installed the 2 additional memory modules, I should have a total of 3Gb ram, but it will only show 2.5Gb installed. After playing around for a while. it appears that the memory doesn't show if all are installed, and if i play around with the memory in the slots, i get varying capacities, but never the true amount unless i just stick to dimm slots 1 & 2 with the same ram. Note, I have 2 x 1GB stick of Corsair matched and 2 x 512Mb sticks of Kingston HyperX matched ram. Anybody have a clue what its doing?

Edit: Well according to CPU-Z all 4 banks are full and showing as CPU-z can identify the ram in each slot...still only shows as 2.5gb tho.

BlizzardX · 12 May 2006 at 15:36

Has anybody else had this trouble with Epox's before?