Performance considerations of 4 DIMMs vs. 2 DIMMs

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volve

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
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So I'm still a bit hazy on this one point. Back in the day with my Athlon64 4000+ running on an NForce board, if all 4 DIMM slots were populated then the motherboard would drop all the RAM down to PC2700 speeds even if all the installed chips supported PC3200.

Is this issue still a factor in the newer generation of chipsets? I'm specifically thinking of the Bad Axe 2 motherboard from Intel or the 680i A1 from Evga.

I've read conflicting reports so it would be nice to get some expert input here.

Thanks all!
 
volve said:
So I'm still a bit hazy on this one point. Back in the day with my Athlon64 4000+ running on an NForce board, if all 4 DIMM slots were populated then the motherboard would drop all the RAM down to PC2700 speeds even if all the installed chips supported PC3200.

Is this issue still a factor in the newer generation of chipsets? I'm specifically thinking of the Bad Axe 2 motherboard from Intel or the 680i A1 from Evga.

I've read conflicting reports so it would be nice to get some expert input here.

Thanks all!
Click to expand...

If you have the option, stick with buying 1 pair of memory.. less potential issues.
 
yes, less issues, but all the intel chipsets run at 2T command rate regardless, so technically 4x1gb will give higher memory performance over 2x1gb due to extra interleaving.
with 680i and the am2 platform, 1T can be used with 2 sticks, so... yeah :p
 
But as far as a negative performance impact when using 4 DIMMs vs. 2, there really aren't any? If anything as you say (cf)Eclipse, I'd actually get BETTER performance with 4 DIMMs on an Intel board.

Curiouser and curiouser.
 
Mansize_tissue said:
With a 680i board, does are there any downsides of using 4 x 1GB over 2 x 2GB?
Click to expand...

2x2gb = 1T, but 4x1gb = more interleaving. i suspect that 2x2gb will be faster with the same speed and timings, though 4x1gb should overclock better :p
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
2x2gb = 1T, but 4x1gb = more interleaving. i suspect that 2x2gb will be faster with the same speed and timings, though 4x1gb should overclock better :p
Click to expand...

Okay, thank you. It's just, i plan on getting an eVGA 680i and, at some point, i want to have 4GB of RAM in there. It won't be run higher than PC2-6400 speeds (its rated speed), but i didn't know if, with all 4 slots filled, you have to reduce the memory frequency. Am i better to just get 2 x 2GB rather than 2 x 1GB, then adding another 2 x 1GB in later?
 
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