Is there a minimum amount of RAM required for a 7970 Crossfire setup?

Hi Guys,

I've ordered 2 XFX 7970 Black Editions and am looking to put together a system out of a spare Intel 980X, Rampage 3 Extreme mobo & 6GB Corsair Dominator GT 2000mhz RAM.

According to the AMD website it recommends using 8GB RAM+ for Crossfire setups.

◾8GB (or more) of system memory recommended for AMD CrossFire™ technology

I generally only play 1 game at a time with nothing else open except for the Steam client, Asus Xonar suite and Aquasuite. Ideally I would like to keep the other RAM slots free to provide slightly more clearance for the HSF and so upgrading the RAM would likely mean I wouldn't be able to use the 6GB and Corsair Airflow addon I currently have.

Whilst I can get some more RAM or change what I have does anybody know if more than 6GB is really required?

Thanks for any replies.

Personally i wouldn't of thought it would make a difference, plenty of people run X-fire setups with 4gig of ram without issues.

I have never heard of that before. Im sure 6 gig would be enough

OK. Thanks guys. I guess I'll try the 6GB first and hope it works ok. I just wandered if there was a reason that 8GB's is the recommended amount and why extra seems to be recommended for a crossfire setup over a single card setup.

There's an oddity in the combination of certain versions of Vista and DX9 games that requires a huge amount of reserved memory space as your graphics card RAM increases - doubled again if crossfired/SLI'd.

This was long ago mitigated with a patch to Vista, though it still doesn't behave all that well in certain circumstances. But I'd guess that that requirement is a worst-case scenario from those days.

I'm planning on using Win 7 64bit home premium so I'm hoping that it won't suffer from what you have described above Kalniel.

I get the impression that 12GB is somewhat of an overkill for general gaming but 6GB is slightly smaller than ideal. Bit of a pain really!

4GB is ideal for general gaming, as the vast majority of games are limited to 2.3gb of RAM usage anyway. 6GB gives some extra space for the few that are 64bit executables, but won't be fully used in gaming. 8GB or above is overkill. (But it won't degrade your performance either, so if there's no cost to choosing a 8gb option there's no harm to it).

On a 1366 system 6GB is ideal and won't be limiting for gaming in the slightest. I spent a chunk on 12GB only because I use my comp for some other stuff that benefits, but even my worst game for RAM use doesn't come anywhere near to taking total system usage to 6GB.

Thanks Kalniel. That was what I was hoping but it's always nice to get it confirmed.

With the price of DDR3 reaching as low as £28 for 8gb of vengeance LP, why would you have less?

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Originally Posted by technodean

With the price of DDR3 reaching as low as £28 for 8gb of vengeance LP, why would you have less?

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Sounds like you're speaking about RAM for dual channel motherboards????

The Rampage 3 Extreme is an LGA1366 mobo and so therefore uses triple channel memory. As I already have 6GB the question is do I buy another 6GB on top but then fill up all the DIMM slots which in turn affects the HSF you can put on the CPU. Alternatively I can dump the 6GB I have and buy 12GB instead which as most people would agree is probably more than you require when just gaming in general.

You're quite right though in the fact that RAM is still very cheap when compared to the rest of my system and no doubt I will end up going to 12GB at some point in the future. I just don't quite have the cash to get 12GB of decent memory now and hoped that 6GB would be ok until I can afford it.

For some reason I always end up buying systems that require triple channel or quad channel memory.........guess it's all my own fault really ;)

[Edit: Looks as though you were referring to dual channel memory although the fact it was low profile probably would have got around any issues with the HSF]

sorry, didn't see you were using triple channel ram, also never looked at the prices. Ive paid over £70 for 4gb ddr2 in the past. Thats the reason I went from 775 to 1155 as i was paying more money for an older setup for a lot less performance. Wish I now had the lp vengeance instead of the as im looking for a new cooler.

I'd say go with 8 just because it's so cheap.

if u already have 3x2gb sticks, i'd say just stick with that 6gb imo.