OC3D Article: 3GB, GB & 12GB DDR3 Investigated

[w3bbo]

All of my reviews are based on fact. I do sometimes throw my personal opinion in but only when neccesary. As an example, in the review I clearly recommend 6GB for the average user yet I run 12GB in my system. My personal opinion does not sway my professional one at any time.

I didn't read the whole 'thing' (both your post and the 'article' you posted) because I have no need to. It's old news and adds nothing to the thread/review. For someone buying an i7 setup the question we get asked alot is what kit should they go for, specifically what size. In the review I hope I have answered that question.

I have not once been asked. 'Is triple channel worth it'? Whether it is or it isn't is irrelevent to the article I wrote. x58 motherboards utilise triple channel memory and like it or not, thats what size kits we get sent for review. I don't think the majority of our readers would appreciate me babbling on about what channels are on offer when I have 21GB's worth of ram to review.

 

[Rastalovich]

I think the channel thing has gone by the wayside. Channel discussions were made way back when dual channel came on the scene and "is it any better than single" was argued.

Single, triple, quad (which we should have imo) is at this point a non-debate, the more u have the better.

I'm pretty darn sure enthusiasts would be aware.

*wonders if w3bbo wants to do all the tests again with 1 and 2 sticks of each* lol

Not even sure dual works on a triple channel mobo.

 

[w3bbo]

*wonders if w3bbo wants to do all the tests again with 1 and 2 sticks of each* lol

lol...I think not.

 

[themcman1]

lol...I think not.

I'll do it for you.

No actually, it would drive me insane.

 

[Sihastru]

I now see that my joke (~sarcasm) wasn't really appreciated. I apologize for posting in in the first place.

But, sarcasm aside, I find it difficult to understand where the misunderstanding about single/dual/triple channel is. The idea is that you need a really powerful CPU to bottleneck single/dual channel bandwidth (from 2GB/s to 8GB/s, although most dual channel systems are at ~6GB/s). Then you need the right applications that will make use of that bandwidth. If the CPU can handle processing 6GB/s of data, then it will take longer to process the same amount of data on a single channel memory subsystem. It's not rocket science. Testing the concept using a poor platform (an not-starved CPU) doesn't invalidate the value of the technology. Testing non-memory intensive applications doesn't take advantage of the technology.

And do you always take information as being true for granted? Maybe they made a small mistake when testing.

NOW, MORE TO THE POINT OF THE ARTICLE.

Just a small thing that's twitching my mind. An application compiled in a 32bit environment will act as a 32bit application even if you give it a 64bit OS and even if you give it 8000+TB or RAM. If the application is 32bit built then the <2GB of addressing space is still it's limit (1.78 something, can't remember, but it's less then 2GB actually). So that application will work on a system with 2-3GB of RAM just as well as on an 24GB system. The difference will be that the 24GB will probably cache more applications and will seem snappier.

In the Visual Studio environment you have a tool (can't remember the name), that you can use to try to "patch" an 32bit executable to take advantage of 64bit. It rarely works, patched executables are very buggy, but not because of the tool, but because of the original application programmers, but it's worth a try.

Almost all games are 32bit. Games will NOT take advantage of 64bit systems and their extra memory. Systems with 3-4GB of memory will run games without any memory limitations.

You can't expect game studios to switch completely to 64bit. In-house software, like level-design is already 64bit. But when most people still are on 32bit, if they switch to 64bit they will loose money. Since 32bit works on 64bit, but not vice-versa it is clear why games don't see any real improvement when running them on a 64bit system with lots of available memory.

Same thing goes for the other types of applications. Some, in the pro and business sector, already made the switch, because there it is expected. But in the mainstream it's not that they don't want, they just can't because of the consumer.

But that will change really fast, really soon. Then your 3GB RAM will drag you down, and you'll remember the crazy guys that told you to buy as much ram as possible. It's not that expensive and it's about very-near future proofing.

 

[moogle]

In the Visual Studio environment you have a tool (can't remember the name), that you can use to try to "patch" an 32bit executable to take advantage of 64bit. It rarely works, patched executables are very buggy, but not because of the tool, but because of the original application programmers, but it's worth a try.

Do you mean patches the program to allow more memory to be allocated? There's an app that patches 32-bit programs so they can allocate more than their 2GB limit. I used one on HCI Memtest and before I could only allocated 1792MB to each app and after it could use 2.5GB. Didn't affect the program stability either

 

[Bungral]

Plus if you had several 32 bit apps open than utilised 2gb, then as a whole the 64 bit os would use more than just the 32 bit limit.

 

[moogle]

Plus if you had several 32 bit apps open than utilised 2gb, then as a whole the 64 bit os would use more than just the 32 bit limit.

Yep thats exactly how I use HCI Memtest to test the memory in Windows

 

[Diablo]

Great review, nice to see a pretty thorough assesment of it all. I agree with Bungral, I regularly have paintshop pro, firefox, outlook, itunes and a couple of other programs running which are generally 32bit, and never run low on memory because I have 8GB of RAM. Sure I could get away with 4GB, but vista is that much snappier on more ram. Also its nice to see a comment on all sizes of ram (unlike a tom's hardware article from a few months back).

I think the review nicely balances the needs of the heavier user against cost and comes out with 6gb being the sweet spot. I think debating whether we want dual or triple channel is irrelevant because we've got triple and that's not going to change in the short term.

 

[Rastalovich]

You can't expect game studios to switch completely to 64bit.

No, cos they're crap, in the main.

But that will change really fast, really soon.

We've been saying that for years, and I can quite confidently say - no it won't

 

[Sihastru]

We've been saying that for years, and I can quite confidently say - no it won't

AMD launched AMD64 8 years ago. Back then it was a small company's cry for survival, just a little gimmick to fool us all. Intel came on board later. We are just starting to come on board. The problem is not with them, it is with us. We took this long to see the value in the technology.

These days the voices in my head speak big words like "virtualization" and "cloud computing" and other stuff that I don't know the meaning of yet. The voices are getting louder.

At work I have at least 3 virtual machines online on my workstation, trying to keep temp builds as clean as possible, trying to pre-test the code on different OS's. They eat up RAM like there's no tomorrow.

At home I have just one or two, occasionally. One is some random linux distrib the other is windows 7, just for fun.

We're not all just playing games you know... so crazy little me wants all the RAM crazy little me can afford...

 

[Rastalovich]

Yep, probably crazy.

 

[Diablo13]

I would just like to say Than You for a very interesting review w3bbo.

As a fairly average user with ideas that exceed my technical knowledge and certainly my pocket, the review showed me a common sense answer to my requirements.

I am at present running win7 on a Q9550 cpu with 4gb of Crucial ballistics 1066 ram. I have been thinking of upgrading, but replacing board, ram and cpu all at once is a bit expensive for me. However when I do upgrade shortly, I would have seen 12gb kits availlable and would have tried to go with that, to save upgrading again later. Your review has shown me that 6gb of DDR3 would be enough for my requirements to run the system well, without the need for extra expense, especially as a 12gb kit is more than double the price of a 6 gb kit, which I find surprising? I would have expected 12gb to be around the £180 mark to encourage us to splash out a bit more. Anyway basically 6gb is essential, 12gb would be a nice bonus, 3gb forget it, which I believe sums up the conclusions in a nutshell.

Regardless, thanks again for the great review and all the time you put in to do it properly. Very useful for me.

 

[w3bbo]

Wow, nice to hear feedback like that. Cheers, glad I could help.

DDR3 is dropping dramatically though so 12GB might fit alot of peoples budgets now.

 

[diogojrv91]

It would be perfect if I-Ram for ddr3 exists...