3x 8GB dimm's vs 6x 4GB dimm's - or?

[NSanity]

So I have a x58 Rampage 3 Extreme with 6x 4GB dimm's in it (1600 9/9/9 dominators as per the sig).

Is it worth tossing/reselling these and getting stupid fast 8GB dimms (do they even work in x58 boards? I assume so) - for e.g these http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?...ducts_id=18903

Or should i just toss the x58 platform (aka on-sell it) and go Ivy Bridge?

Outside of benches, I know with SB/IB there is bugger-all performance gains in Ram - but iirc ram frequency helps when overclocking gulftown.

[ShaneHm2]

I think first of all you need to ask yourself is above 24gb of ram needed for what you use your pc for ?

It seems that you have your system fairly decently spec'd out and I can see any benefit of you getting extra ram for it unless your doing heavy rendering.

As for upgrading possibly get 3 x 16gb memory kits (dual channel and see if that will work).

[NSanity]

Board tops out at 24GB, only the Black editions (and i think the Big Bang X Power - or maybe the G1 Assassin, can't remember) will go up to 48gb.

My machine doubles as a work machine, as such periodically it will flog all its resources depending on what i need to complete for a client.

I'm looking at a pair of 670s in SLI, and the old 980x will probably start to show its age a bit, so i'm looking to overclock it to 4.4-4.5ghz.

If I have an easier time with 3 dimms than 6, I may investigate going that way.

[Stanza]

Isn't x58 memory. Controller by CPU, which is i7 ?

Which maxes @ 24gb

.

[TheContact]

kinda off-topic, but Tommo_Aus got 48gb working on an i7 965/x58a-ud3r

[FreelancerJ]

Originally Posted by ShaneHm2

I think first of all you need to ask yourself is above 24gb of ram needed for what you use your pc for?

Sometimes excess RAM is useful for more than just rendering and other normal RAM intensive applications. I have 32GB in my machine (had a sale pricing it within 20 bucks of 16GB, with faster timing :P ) and use it for all sorts a tweaks.
I have my browser cache mounting in a RAMDISK on startup, when I start minecraft and similar games, I have them loading the worlds/saves/resources into a RAMDISK and then mounts it appropriately to give better load times and responsiveness, as well as reducing unnecessary reads and writes on my SSD (I know whether that matters as much is up for debate, but it DOES make gameplay plenty faster!).
Just as one example of why a high chunk of RAM can be beneficial if its not out of affordability

Although, if you aren't actually adding any more, I don't see why you'd want to spend so much money on it. It may even be, like with my board, that if its at its maximum now, it may not take the fewer, higher capacity chips. Mine supposedly won't take 2x 16GB chips but will take the 4x 8GB chips. Worth being sure of

[Tommo_Aus]

The Intel site may state a 24GB limit but it isn't, they probably only tested with 4GB sticks at the time as 8GB wasn't readily available when 1366 i7's went on the market. My X58A-UD3R has been running 48GB for 5 months now without any issues. I'm not sure if all 1366 motherboards support 48GB, its more a trial and error situation.

[m3k]

Honestly with that much ram might swell allocate 20gb to a ram drive and get your os to run on it some how lol, screw ssd haha

[Butcher9_9]

I think everyone is over looking what the OP really wants to do. Its not a matter of 24 vs 48GB of ram its 3 Dimms vs 6 Dimms and how that might effect overclocking.

The ram multipliers are pretty flexible on X58 so I don't believe that 1600Mhz ram will limit your overclock much. To get 4.5Ghz you would only need a BClock of 180Mhz (pretty sure the X980 is 25 Ratio) so with a 8 Ram multiple you would get 1440Mhz ram or you could drop the ratio to 23 and get 1560 Mem.

There are loads of combos that should work and ram speed does not really effect the performance of your PC enough to justify upgrading from already good 1600mhz to something higher.

That all being said if you have money to burn go for it, its not going to hurt (short of some sort of incompatibility)

[NSanity]

Originally Posted by m3k

Honestly with that much ram might swell allocate 20gb to a ram drive and get your os to run on it some how lol, screw ssd haha

I have a revo3 x2. I don't have storage io problems.

But yeah it's all about what will overclock better.

[FreelancerJ]

Originally Posted by NSanity

I have a revo3 x2. I don't have storage io problems.

Ain't it a dream? Althought, the extra POST from it's built in BIOS is a bit annoying... Don't suppose you've gotten it working right with Linux by chance though? :P