Motherboard question (875p)... Memory question(dual-channel)...

[bond007taz]

I am making the switch from AMD to Intel and I am torn on which motherboard I should get...

here are the two I am trying to decide between:

Gigabyte GA-8KNXP
MSI 875P Neo-FIS2R (MS-6758)

The thing is, they are both great motherboards with crazy features... the gigabyte has more DIMM slots and that is good for future upgrades. Now, the question that I have about memory: do all slots need to be filled with dual-channel DDR or just the first series of slots? Can i fill the first slots with dual-channel memory and then fill the rest with non-dual channel memory? I am not that familiar with dual-channel memory and can't find much info about it - if you have a link about dual-channel and what to do with the open slots, please post.

Anybody with these motherboards, let me know what you think or how you have yours configured.

 

[egale]

Personally, I nhave the Asus P4C800-E but dual channel is usually every other slot and the color of the slot is matching. With tht Asus board, the slots are grey or blue. To run dual channel, you would fill either the grey or blue slots. Most 875 boards have problems if you fill more than one set of slots. Maybe that will be fixed by a future bios upgrade but for now, plan on only filling 2 slots.

You can not have a pair of sticks running dual channel and one running single. Either the mobo is in dual channel mode or single channel mode.

 

[bond007taz]

so i would put dual channel in all slots? the gigabyte board has 2 slots code orange and then 4 slots coded purple. Kind of how you would configure the original pentium systems, 2 at a time...

if i put dual channel memory in the orange slots and normal memory in the purple slots, the board would run in single channel mode?

Thanks!

 

[egale]

The Gigabyte board is different that it has 6 slots for memory instead of 4. I did a bit of research and found this quote from a review at pcstats.com

"The six DIMM slots can accommodate up to 4GB of ECC/Non-ECC PC2100/2700/3200 DDR RAM, however you can only use eight banks of memory. Each side of DIMM counts as one bank, so plan your memory early lest you be caught with six double sided DIMMs of which only four will be used."

So it looks like if you found 1GB sticks, you could only use 4. In any case, most mobos have a hard time using more than a gig of memory right now. Still, I think that the motherboard must be running all dual channel or else it runs in single channel mode. With the Gigabyte board, you would populate the two orange slots with identical sticks to run dual. I have no idea which two purple slots you would pick. Maybe a call to their tech support would help.

 

[bond007taz]

egale, thanks for the info! Now I can make a decison on how many and what kind of sticks of RAM to get

 

[NicColt]

According to a recent Anandtech article, 4 x 256 dimms were faster in single channel than 2 x 512 in Dual channel. Just though I'd let you know. Not by much but still.

 

[PaperclipGod]

Originally posted by: NicColt
According to a recent Anandtech article, 4 x 256 dimms were faster in single channel than 2 x 512 in Dual channel. Just though I'd let you know. Not by much but still.

link?

 

[RalfHutter]

Originally posted by: PaperclipGod

Originally posted by: NicColt
According to a recent Anandtech article, 4 x 256 dimms were faster in single channel than 2 x 512 in Dual channel. Just though I'd let you know. Not by much but still.

link?

"Use the Search young Luke"

Here ya go.