P6T Deluxe RAM upgrade question.

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kompulsive

Limp Gawd
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Oct 11, 2008
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I'm mainly using this machine (details in signature) as a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) at this point for recording some vocals and doing some MIDI sequencing, but will be doing some video-editing/rendering and gaming as well. I'm going to upgrade the RAM. I've pretty much narrowed it down to two options. G.SKILL Ripjaws F3-1600C9D-16GXM 16GB (2 x 8GB) Dual Channel Kit or G.SKILL Ripjaws Series F3-12800CL9T-12GBRL 12GB (3 x 4GB) Triple Channel Kit.

Which would you go with in my situation? Do I get the 12GB triple channel kit and lose the 4GB of RAM or do I get the 16GB kit and restrict myself to operating in dual channel mode? What is going to give me the best performance here? I'm assuming OCing to around 3.4-3.8GHz won't be an issue with either choice and can be done with relative ease.
 
Do triple channel. The extra channel will most likely give better performance. How much better depends on the program.

The i7 920 doesn't officially support 8gb RAM sticks, mostly due to the fact that 8gb sticks didn't exist for consumer platforms when it was released, but it most likely will work without problems. If you plan to eventually upgrade to 48gb RAM, I would just buy two sets now and another later.
 
why would you NOT go with a triple channel kit? 4GB is worth losing for the extra speed/ seeing how 12GB is PLENTY.
 
Well, the second kit of F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ came today and the BIOS is now reporting 8GB of RAM. I have no idea what the issue is. All 6 sticks are loaded in properly, CPU-Z shows 12GB of RAM running in triple channel, as does Speccy. Who do I believe here? What could possibly be going on?
 
kompulsive said:
Well, the second kit of F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ came today and the BIOS is now reporting 8GB of RAM. I have no idea what the issue is. All 6 sticks are loaded in properly, CPU-Z shows 12GB of RAM running in triple channel, as does Speccy. Who do I believe here? What could possibly be going on?
Click to expand...

Easy enough to test. Pull up Prime95 and hit it with 11GB of RAM usage :)

*Also check the "Physical Memory (MB)" section of the task manager. If it's reporting something like 12288, it's probably good. Is your BIOS up to date?
 
cortexodus said:
Easy enough to test. Pull up Prime95 and hit it with 11GB of RAM usage :)

*Also check the "Physical Memory (MB)" section of the task manager. If it's reporting something like 12288, it's probably good. Is your BIOS up to date?
Click to expand...

The Task Manager is only showing 8GB of RAM, but as mentioned before, CPU-Z and Speccy report 12GB of RAM. Speccy reports 12GB of RAM running in triple channel even.

I've loaded up Prime95 and it only shows 8 workers. How can I hit it with 11GB of RAM usage? I've posted a screenshot of the anomaly. I'm stumped. This is super frustrating and doesn't make any sense.

LV6yau4.png
 
theres a setting in your bios thats doing this, i remember this happening on my x58 boards too
 
It's called like spread spectrum or something. If you look at systgem properties it'll say 12GB (8GB Usable). Right?
 
Bios update shouldn't be a factor, triple channel should be available from day 0.
It doesn't hurt to update your bios to newest, reseat your ram, and manually enter your ram values.

#1 thing with underreported ram: Pull your CPU and check with a magnifying glass for bent pins.
 
clean the contacts for the ram slots and the sticks with alcohol as well.
 
RAM/Board is going bad. I had an old Rampage II Extreme that did exactly this, had 24GB of ram in it, i7 920 in it at 4.1GHZ, shits itself upon bootup into OS one day, restart pc, mobo only reports 8GB of ram, re-seating, cleaning contacts, even trying another set of different ram did not change a thing. Good board while it lasted though before I upgraded to the R3E.
 
try lowering the speeds of the ram at 1066 or whatever default timings are for that board. Its been a while since I had mine, but I remember with a certain amount of ram or using all the slots not all of those asus x58 boards would run 1600mhz. Easy enough to try at least right? just ditch all OC settings and see what happens. Just save your current setting under bios profile manager so its easy to go back.
 
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