I'm somewhat confused when it comes to supported memory channels. Looking around on newegg, I'm seeing a lot of mobos with 4 ram slots, but it says that the channel supported is dual channel. So does this mean that you have to be using at least two channels? Is the max two slots? Am I even talking about the same thing? It's confusing the crap out of my because they have four slots yet they're dual channel.
dual channel allows the ram to do read and write at the same time. and the 2 extra slots will be combined with the first 2 as long as you use ram thats slower than the speed the cpu can handle nativley.
but once you increase the ram speed past what the cpu can handle nativley ie the ivy cpu handles up to 1600mhz but you can run 2300mhz ram on the motherboard. you will find ram will randomly disapear either in bios or in windows. this is because when you run the faster ram than your cpu supports your often limited to 1 stick per channel which reduces the amount of total ram that can be used by upto 50% so if your running 4 sticks of ddr3 2300 and your motherboard supports up to 1600 mhz nativley but up to 2300 oc, only 2 sticks will be usable by the system.
i hope that makes sence... check with your motherboard memory compatability chart to see if the ram is limited this way 1s you get past a certain speed.
its actually better to run ram that your cpu handles nativley to get the best perfomance from the ram and the cpu. there is no real world benefit from running faster ram than your cpu can handle even if the motherboard can handle ram thats x2 faster. its pure sales hype...
on benches you will see a difference in numbers but thats just telling you the bandwidth the faster ram can handle it has nothing to do with actual perfomance which is governed more by cas latency than ram speed.
like i say its better to run ram thats 1600mhz 7-7-7-21 than 2300mhz 9-9-9-27 you will actually get more real world perfomance and be abel to access more actual ram from the slower but more efficently timed ram.
so dont be fooled by the hype.
That actually really helped me a lot. I'm planning on upgrading my CPU, MOBO, and RAM, and I was looking into getting some 2133 ram, because the mobo supports it by overclock. I want an AMD cpu, either 6 or 8 core. How do I go about finding the max speed they can handle? It doesn't seem to say it on newegg..
EDIT according to http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/pages/amdfx-model-number-comparison.aspx the max speed the fx series supports is 1866. a little disappointing. Maybe instead of getting 8 gigs of 2133 i should go with 16 gigs of 1866. It would probably be around the same price to be honest. Does that sound like a good plan?
you could get the faster ram and down clock it to lower latencies. but if you an get the slower ram at similar timings for the same money then why not.