Granite Bay Mobo\3 sticks of DDR still take advantage of the dual channels???

[Hyperlite26]

Hi, I have a Granite Bay mobo coming this week. Before i picked the brd I got some advice as to which ram and all to go with. I learned that I should go with DDR RAM in pairs to take advantage of the dual channel GB mobo. Here's my new question, and I think I alrdy know the answer..lol.

My new mobo has 3 slots max for RAM so I wanted to get the most RAM for my budget and ordered 3 sticks of 256 DDR 2100, but i guess I had a brain lapse when ordering and didnt think about it messing up the paired deal.lol So, that's gonna screw me up to where the GB brd isnt going to take advantage of the dual channel feature because it needs to be paired right? Because it's not gonna use the first 2 sticks to run at max capacity and then the other stick at the slower speed correct? In other words.... I may as well forget about ever using the third slot for a stick of RAM, send these 3 sticks of 256 ddr back and get 2 sticks of 512, or can I keep the 3 sticks of 256 and get max performance still? Thanks in advance!!!

 

[oldfart]

You should have 4 ram slots. What board are you getting?

 

[Aldaris2002]

Heh, yep, as far as i know you answered your question correctly. It's strange that your motherboard has 3 slots and not 4, as 2 paired banks would be the most logical design as on the ASUS P4G8X. What motherboard is it that you are getting? Also, where did you get it from?

 

[Hyperlite26]

Hi, yea I kinda thought I was correct on my reasoning but wanted to make sure. Dont know why I didnt put that together when I ordered the RAM. I did ck and the brd is just 3 slots of RAM, its a Gigabyte brd. >>> http://www.giga-byte.com/products/8pe667ultra_spec.htm , but it's not really a big deal.

I wont ever go over a gig of memory anyway so I'll just send these 3 sticks back and get 2 512's. They havent been opened so it wont be a problem. Plus, I wont keep this brd and chip combo more than a yr or so and will upgrade to the latest greatest so 3 RAM slots wont hurt me. Thanks for the advice fellas, and I appreciate the initial help on getting the GB \ DDR \ Rambus choice straight for me Oldfart, you helped me on that last week. lol Thx again, until next go round, and there will be another round I know..hehe

 

[Aldaris2002]

Hyperlite,

If that link you provided was in fact to the correct motherboard, the motherboard you ordered is NOT a Granite Bay motherboard. It is based on the 845PE chipset, which supports only single-channel DDR and thus your three sticks of 256MB PC2100 will give 768MB of DDR memory with a memory bandwidth of 2.1GB/s. The Intel E7205 chipset is the one that supports dual-channel DDR and is found on the:

ASUS P4G8X
GIGABYTE GA-8INXP (http://www.giga-byte.com/products/8inxp.htm)
MSI GNB MAX

I thought it was a little strange that Gigabyte would make such a strange choice to include 3 RAM banks, where pairs would be the most useful.

Hope this helps,
Aldaris

 

[Hyperlite26]

Hmmm, Yea, that does help kinda.rofl It helps in knowing I ordered the wrong friggin mobo too.hehe
Well, it looks like Im gonna have to send back the Gigabyte mobo and the 3 sticks of ram too.lol I cant find the Gigabyte brd on pricewatch or the MSI one, did find the Asus so I guess I'll order it. I may as well go all the way with the upgrade since Im gona do it and the GA-8PE667 Ultra isnt dual channel and the Asus dual channel is just 50 bucks more. I appreciate the info, live and learn eh?lol At least I havent unpacked any of the stuff yet.... whew.

 

[Hyperlite26]

Hey checking the Asus specs it says for the memory>>> 4 x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 4GB PC2100/PC1600 ECC/non-ECC DDR SDRAM memory

>>>Pc2100 but for 10 bucks more I can get PC2700 which I was told I could go with and improve performance if I decided I wanted to ever overclock it. So would PC2700 sticks work...it doesnt say they will? Thx!

 

[Aldaris2002]

Hyperlite,

Yeah, Granite Bay motherboards are extremely scarce right now. MyInfinity is the only one listing the ASUS P4G8X, but their E.T.A. on the board is Wed Dec 4, 02 so you should probably just keep checking Pricewatch to see if they've updated the status of the board. Hopefully in a week or two, you'll start to see them popping up on Egghead, etc.

As for your memory question, if you ARE going to overclock, by all means the PC2700 will work on the board and will give you better performance since its 5.4GB/s max is a little higher than PC2100's, however if you do not plan to overclock, I would recommend going with PC2100 as it fills the 533Mhz FSB perfectly at 4.2Gb/s, while PC2700 may not perform as well since it has to drop down in order to accomadate for the slightly slower FSB.

Aldaris