Triple Channel Ram in a Dual Channel Board

[LuckyGiant]

Hi,

I purchased a second hand pc which has 6gb (3x2Gb) OCZ Gold DDR3 PC3 10666 1333MHz Triple Channel.

My motherboard is a MSI 790GX-G65 which has 4 memory slots, but can only run at on dual channel (AM3 CPU).
I'm using windows 7 64Bit.

So what are my best options:
1) Keep the 6gb in the board as 3x2Gb modules, I assume this runs in single channel?
2) Remove 2gb from the computer and run 2x2gb (4gb) in dual channel mode?
3) Buy another 2Gb module and run 4x2Gb (8gb) in dual channel mode?
4) Sell the ram and purchase a dual channel kit because you can't run triple channel memory in dual mode?

What you'd recommend?

Cheers,
Jason

 

[Ancalagon44]

There is no such thing as triple channelRAM, only triple channel motherboards. That RAM will work fine in the new board. But yes, I would probably buy an extra 2G stick and use it in dual channel mode in your PC.

be aware that it helps to match the new stick as closely as possible to the old sticks. Thats the only reason they are sold as kits, the other being convenience.

 

[a123456]

Typically, 3 sticks in a dual channel board will make everything run in single channel.

They haven't tested dual vs. single performance in a long time, but the last time they did, it was about 5% difference.

I wouldn't really call it a big deal, especially if you use more than 4GB of memory.

That means Option 1 is fine. Option 2 is fine if you're not doing anything to take up 4GB of ram and you care about the 5% in performance. Option 3 is fine if you really want to spend the money to make things more tidy. Don't do option 4. Just sell off 1 stick if you really want to downgrade to 4GB and stay there.

At least with dual vs. triple, of course you can tell the difference with synthetic benchmarks but not so much with real-world stuff, like games.

 

[Emulex]

no intel interleaves the dual channel and doesn't interleave the single channel and doesn't do symmetric interleaving. so you lose %% based on memory access (slowest goes to top i thought).

but christ buy another dimm its not like they are expensive.

 

[LuckyGiant]

Thanks very much for the responses.

I will be doing some modeling so might use the extra ram. Besides that, the extra stick I'm looking at is only 5 pounds shipped so for that cost I'm not worried at all if I don't use it.

What I need to know now is if the stick of ram I'm looking at is compatible with my existing ram.

The current ram I'm using is:
OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Triple Channel (OCZ3G1333LV6GK)

The extra stick I'm looking at for £5 is:
OCZ OCZ3G1333LV2G 2GB DDR3 PC3 10666 1333MHz

Could I add this to the triple channel kit to give me 4x2Gb in dual mode or is it not compatible?

Cheers

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would sell off the RAM (just because it is OCZ, and you don't want OCZ RAM in your system), and then buy some Gskill or Corsair or something.