ddr3 only had 4g but now have 8g available

[jeffg001]

Hi
not long ago ddr3 only had available 4gb sticks, now we can buy 8 gb mem sticks
Have others been trying the new ddr3 8gig sticks in previous 32 gb systems?

remember when this happened with laptops used to be only 4g dims then when 8g dims came out they worked in previously advertised 4g systems?

 

[morningreis]

I'm running an x58 mobo right now with only 3 ram slots. The official specs for my mobo say 12GB supported since 3x4 =12. However I recently upgraded to 3x8 for 24GB and it was detected and works without an issue. So yes, you can use 8GB sticks, but having said that your mileage may also vary.

 

[Tsumi]

Most older systems will work. Some may not, but those are relatively rare. It would be like a gamble you have a 90% chance of winning.

 

[drescherjm]

I have a pair of 8GB sticks in my X58 system for over a year now (maybe even 2) to give it the weird size of 30 GB of ram with 4G x 3 + 8G x2 + 2G x1. The system would not use the ram in 4Gx3 + 8G X2. I needed to fill the last slot to get it to work. I was thinking of adding the 3rd 8GB stick but then the ram prices went up so I held off. Now that prices are down I may add some however I may just wait and get a DDR4 platform for the windows workstation when Skylake-E comes out in 2017. And then it's not like 36GB will do much more for me than 30GB.

 

[plugwash]

From what I can gather

LGA1156 (P55 etc) is not officially supported with 8GB sticks. I've only seen one report of someone who tried it and they claimed it didn't work.
Desktop LGA1366 (X58) is not officially supported with 8GB sticks but apparently they do work in practice. This is not too surprising as server LGA1366 systems did support 8GB and even 16GB sticks.
Sandy bridge and later desktop systems officially support 8GB sticks.

Interestingly with sandy bridge many motherboard vendors were listing support for 8GB sticks in their specs even though you couldn't actually buy 8GB sticks of desktop DDR3 at the time.

 

[defaultluser]

From what I can gather

LGA1156 (P55 etc) is not officially supported with 8GB sticks. I've only seen one report of someone who tried it and they claimed it didn't work.

It works according to this page:

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1087097

May still be limited artificially to 16 GB, but the higher density DIMMs work. This is because 8GB density DIMMs were part of the original DDR3 spec.

Interestingly with sandy bridge many motherboard vendors were listing support for 8GB sticks in their specs even though you couldn't actually buy 8GB sticks of desktop DDR3 at the time.

And Sandy Bridge advertises 8gb dimm support because the chipset officially supported 32GB. Not artificially limited like P55 D