Tripple channel vs dual channel memory?

[chavo]

Hi,

I have a second hand system see below, the question i suppose I have is should i get another 2 gb stick to make it 6gb tripple channel OR get 2x4gb sticks for an 8gb system? System will be used for light gaming, running the odd virtual machine, general geeky photoshop type stuff.

Thanks

Core i7 920 (LGA1366)
Asus Workstation P6T6 ws revolution.
corsair force 2 ssd
Ram TBC
Graphics TBC

[kalniel]

8GB dual channel would be more benefit than 6GB triple channel for photoshop/virtual machines.

[scaryjim]

Do you currently have any RAM, or are you buying from scratch?

AFAIK you don't get much real world performance from faster ram on socket 1366, so if you can stretch the budget why not go 12GB of slowish RAM? You can get a Kingston 12GB kit for £75 on ebuyer...

EDIT: at £25 per stick that's actually pretty much as cheap as you can get 4GB sticks.

[fozan1072]

6 GB will be more than enough. Granted you may not see the the speed difference. Since it has triple channel memory use it since the board tops out at 24 gb total.

[kalniel]

6 GB will be more than enough.

More than enough for how many VMs?

[aidanjt]

More than enough for how many VMs?

More than enough for "running the odd virtual machine".

[scaryjim]

For running two VMs side-by-side? What host OS? What GuestOS? Running what services?

Insufficient data. If the VM needs 4GB of RAM, a 6GB host is going to struggle. If the VM only needs 512MB, then 6GB will be fine. But you can't really make a sweeping generalisation off the amount of info the OP gave, and more memory is *never* going to hurt a computer...

[stilkun]

I agree, there is no harm with giving it more memory, it's no fun when you have 6GB of ram and have to start closing down Outlook and web browser when running 2x 2GB servers on your machine.

Windows 7 takes up roughly 1GB of RAM, leaving you roughly less than 5GB of RAM. If you are planning to run 1 or 2 VM, you can set guest hardware to minimum hardware spec for the operating system with no applications installed (Win XP you can run up to 512MB min and Win8/Win7 you can run up to 1GB min) you can get away. But if you are multitasking say web browsers with few tab opens along with running guest your PC will begin to feel sluggish and complain about memory.

Don't forget that the operating system will use the guest hard drive as paging file/RAM when you bunch of programs go over the maximum RAM allocated therefore causing performance issue if you are using HDD however I can see that you have SSD.

[chavo]

Hi, thanks for your comments, when I say using a odd cm session, it is literally for bordom or for work, if I need to test how something will work, say i need an sbs 2003 server it would be nice to have one that I could fire up for any testing. I would not be running a crazy amount. And I agree more ram the merrier!

I suppose the real question i have is, what is better tripple channel or dual channel? Can this board even run dual channel?

[aidanjt]

Triple channel. And yes, it does.

[kalniel]

I suppose the real question i have is, what is better tripple channel or dual channel? Can this board even run dual channel?

Well all other things being equal, of course triple channel is better. But if it's a trade off between capacity and triple channel then it's a different story, and as above, the board/CPU can run dual channel fine.