Why all the 4x DDR4 kits?

[BonzaiDuck]

I know that some people want 32GB of RAM in their systems, but there's been plenty of opinion about the need for it. Take, for instance, the most recent issues of Maximum PC, wherein the publishers are trying to recommend how to choose computer parts.

They are still saying the 8GB is plenty. I've got 16GB and seldom see the memory-usage dial exceed 40%.

Now here we are, looking at the Haswell-E processors, the X99 motherboards -- I thought I saw eight RAM slots in one I just looked at.

I checked the Egg for the DDR4 offerings. All I see is 32GB or 4x8GB kits!!

What gives? What if I only want 16GB? Is it me? Or is it the industry? If they're going to offer only 4x8, why aren't they working a 2x16GB kit?

Just wondering. Maybe I have to scroll through a dozen pages when I search on "DDR4 16GB" or "DDR4 2 x 8GB."

You'd think they'd offer 4x kits later in the cycle! Am I just getting old!?

 

[DooKey]

X99 is a quad channel setup so all the kits will be 4x dimm sets.

Lots of 4x4gb stets there so you can get your 16gb total if you like.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233696

 

[BonzaiDuck]

X99 is a quad channel setup so all the kits will be 4x dimm sets.

Lots of 4x4gb stets there so you can get your 16gb total if you like.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820233696

Oh, Geez!! I knew the E boards were quad-channel with the X79!! I am truly becoming an old fart!! I get it! I get it! And . . . I just plain forgot.

 

[_Rick_]

...no such thing as enough RAM.

Chrome alone eats 13GB right now, so 16GB is really on the borderline of usefulness.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

...no such thing as enough RAM.

Chrome alone eats 13GB right now, so 16GB is really on the borderline of usefulness.

You're kidding, aren't you? I assume you mean the Google web-browser? Is there some other "Chrome" I don't know about? :\

 

[Oyeve]

Hell, im still on a dual core s775 and 8 gb of DDR2 and my PC zooms.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hell, im still on a dual core s775 and 8 gb of DDR2 and my PC zooms.

Well, you're still using SATA-II storage technology. It's bottlenecked even with a new SSD. I'll catch some flack for this, but you might want to experiment with the 90-day trial version of Primo-Cache. Depending on your usage, it might eliminate any "hourglass" experiences. From my usage so far on two old computers (each with 8GB of RAM), it's stable and reliable. Only you would know if you'll get more value out of the 8GB by using 2 or 3GB of it toward this purpose.

 

[Topweasel]

BD I will say one thing, it's a bit silly to get a 6 or 8 core platform and then see 32GB as to much memory. I mean in the end most people would be fine on a 2c 4t i3, and this forum itself limits CPU recommendations to a 4c4t i5. If you "only" want 8GB or 16GB of memory because it's overkill then wouldn't that apply to the CPU and pretty much the platform as a whole.

Or is it purely the 4x sticks and not the end resulting capacity? If so then yeah as you figured out/remembered. Only 1 DDR4 platform and it's Quad channel so no sense selling 2x kits.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

BD I will say one thing, it's a bit silly to get a 6 or 8 core platform and then see 32GB as to much memory. I mean in the end most people would be fine on a 2c 4t i3, and this forum itself limits CPU recommendations to a 4c4t i5. If you "only" want 8GB or 16GB of memory because it's overkill then wouldn't that apply to the CPU and pretty much the platform as a whole.

Or is it purely the 4x sticks and not the end resulting capacity? If so then yeah as you figured out/remembered. Only 1 DDR4 platform and it's Quad channel so no sense selling 2x kits.

See -- I wouldn't disagree there at all. I DO have discipline: I wouldn't build this system until well into next year.

It's another chance to spend some money and tinker around. But the fat lady doesn't sing until you click the "Checkout" buttons.

After looking at the CPU-cooling prospects -- chances for more exotic tinkering -- I'm beginning to wonder if I might just change the "plan" to a Devil's Canyon. Then -- delid the processor and use a water-block applied directly to the die. [Won't that be fun, though?] Then the expense of the cooling challenge diminishes -- maybe.

Frankly, I haven't been enthused about the new processors starting with Ivy Bridge. Back in February, I had considered springing for an IB_E and X79 -- THIS YEAR. I came to my senses (I guess) as folks said "Wait for Haswell-E!"

Anyway, "until the fat lady sings . . . "

 

[VirtualLarry]

Haswell-E may be all that and a bag of chips, but will it be eclipsed by Skylake desktop CPUs in 2 years or less? Does Haswell-E support AVX512 yet? I think that's a new Skylake feature.

Maybe Intel will lose their mind, and stop crippling their CPU's instruction sets so badly, so that some of their extensions actually gain some software traction, and give them a leg up against ARM.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Haswell-E may be all that and a bag of chips, but will it be eclipsed by Skylake desktop CPUs in 2 years or less? Does Haswell-E support AVX512 yet? I think that's a new Skylake feature.

Maybe Intel will lose their mind, and stop crippling their CPU's instruction sets so badly, so that some of their extensions actually gain some software traction, and give them a leg up against ARM.

Sure, and I can see that the Skylake will abandon the integrated voltage regulation. There's another twist to this, though.

A compulsive desire to build a perfect PC (as we watch everyone tripping around all goo-gah about their mobile devices.) The perfect PC doesn't have to be built with the latest/greatest processor, but it helps -- if the choice is a winner.

I don't see any SB-K brethren really eager to abandon their rigs at the moment. I'm basking in "perfection" that seems to have evolved over three years of tinkering.

You know this addiction . . . . surely . . . .

 

[_Rick_]

You're kidding, aren't you? I assume you mean the Google web-browser? Is there some other "Chrome" I don't know about? :\

Nope, not kidding, and yes, the Google web-browser.
I'm a bit of a tab-hoarder, but Chrome doesn't support tab-stacking, so it's not as good for that as is Opera, so I'm only a few dozen tabs deep, but some individual tabs quickly get above 1GB of memory, depending on how well that page is optimized.
I've currently got around a dozen tabs that each use more than 100MB of memory. Web browsers, especially Chrome and derivatives, have become monsters with gaping maws, hungering for RAM. (Opera 12 with 300 tabs only needs around 4GB but tends to start eating up all the CPU it can get after a while and become somewhat slow to respond....)

Anyway, the point remains, no matter what you do, more RAM almost always increases performance, unless you have to make savings on the CPU-side to afford it. If you're used to working in a RAM-constrained environment, and not have all your programs open at the same time, so you can just tab into them where you left off, with minimal delay, then you can make do with less. But personally, I see so many benefits in having everything I need open all the time, that I would suffer, if I were to go back to significantly less RAM. 16GB would be really cutting it close, especially since I started using Chrome alongside Opera.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Nope, not kidding, and yes, the Google web-browser.
I'm a bit of a tab-hoarder, but Chrome doesn't support tab-stacking, so it's not as good for that as is Opera, so I'm only a few dozen tabs deep, but some individual tabs quickly get above 1GB of memory, depending on how well that page is optimized.
I've currently got around a dozen tabs that each use more than 100MB of memory. Web browsers, especially Chrome and derivatives, have become monsters with gaping maws, hungering for RAM. (Opera 12 with 300 tabs only needs around 4GB but tends to start eating up all the CPU it can get after a while and become somewhat slow to respond....)

Anyway, the point remains, no matter what you do, more RAM almost always increases performance, unless you have to make savings on the CPU-side to afford it. If you're used to working in a RAM-constrained environment, and not have all your programs open at the same time, so you can just tab into them where you left off, with minimal delay, then you can make do with less. But personally, I see so many benefits in having everything I need open all the time, that I would suffer, if I were to go back to significantly less RAM. 16GB would be really cutting it close, especially since I started using Chrome alongside Opera.

I can see that. I've just never "run out of RAM" with the current configuration. It wouldn't be a major burden to double what I have now. Looking at the pros and cons, the immediate "hurdle" would be the time it takes to thoroughly test 32GB!! It was a significant inconvenience for me to test 16: the HCI_Memtest-64 1,000% coverage took me nearly 5 days!!

Also -- the testing. Used to be that we'd be inclined to overclock RAM and tweak the latencies. But if you do that, you have to test, test, test. It makes more sense with that much memory to use XMP profiles or set to spec. Then -- hopefully -- you'd only have to test once.

Also -- a recent discovery, confirmed by G.SKILL techs. The XMP profiles were certainly provided because it makes things easier for noobs who might otherwise complain that their "DDR. . 1600 RAM only ran at 1333."

But there was more to it. Anandtech recently published an article (within last year) encouraging use of the XMP profiles, only to say that XMP provided optimum spec performance. Techs at G.SKILL confirmed that XMP tweaks the advanced timings we usually leave on "Auto" to make them "more aggressive."

If I said that I "seemed to feel a difference," could've been my imagination. Still . . . it "seemed to . . . "

 

[Essence_of_War]

Anyway, the point remains, no matter what you do, more RAM almost always increases performance, unless you have to make savings on the CPU-side to afford it.

That seems like a highly dubious claim to me.

More RAM will prevent you from stepping on the metaphorical brakes of swapping to disk, but adding RAM isn't going to speed you up in situations where things like Disk IO, single-threaded CPU performance, or GPU horsepower are your bottlenecks.

If you have workloads that fit entirely into RAM, you're not going to see appreciable speed-up from throwing more RAM at them.

 

[_Rick_]

That seems like a highly dubious claim to me.

More RAM will prevent you from stepping on the metaphorical brakes of swapping to disk, but adding RAM isn't going to speed you up in situations where things like Disk IO, single-threaded CPU performance, or GPU horsepower are your bottlenecks.

If you have workloads that fit entirely into RAM, you're not going to see appreciable speed-up from throwing more RAM at them.

Disk-IO is usually RAM buffered, so you gain there. The more RAM you have, the more the GPU can store textures in it that don't fit into its local memory.
And as I said, if you're CPU-limited (whether multi- or single-threaded), the gains will not be significant.
But, you're rarely interactive anyway, when you're CPU-limited, and having things in RAM reduces I/O induced latencies massively, which you usually get when you are interacting with the system.

Actually paging to disk is such a worst case situation, that I wasn't even really taking it into account for what I said.

 

[Compman55]

There are 2 rules to follow in computers:

1.) You can never have enough hard drive space
2.) You can never have too much RAM.

 

[sm625]

This is where we really need a competitive AMD. I was one of the many who simply refused to pay Intel extortionary prices for Rambus RIMMs back in the P4 days. I simply will not pay for DDR4 and leave a whole bunch of DDR3 just sitting on the shelf when the added bandwidth does next to nothing for me. AMD recognized this opportunity and jumped on it with inexpensive "DDR" chipsets that forced Intel to give up on Rambus and start making its own DDR based chipsets. What ever new design AMD comes up with, we can be almost certain that their memory controller will support DDR3. And that is what I will be buying when I buy new. And if it isnt as fast as Intel, then so be it. But I'm not dropping $200 on new RAM for no reason. DDR3 is going to be dirt cheap thanks to all the dummies out there who will actually buy into this DDR4 scam.

 

[Essence_of_War]

There are 2 rules to follow in computers:

1.) You can never have enough hard drive space
2.) You can never have too much RAM.

You can, however, have too little budget, to be able to afford throwing money at subsystems beyond diminishing returns

 

[aznb0b]

When is ddr4 going to become "the norm" ??

 

[BFG10K]

Chrome alone eats 13GB right now, so 16GB is really on the borderline of usefulness.

Then Chrome has serious memory leaks and needs to be avoided.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

I have a 5820K and 5960X right now (will have to pick one if I go X99). I have no problem dropping $400-$500 on a flagship X99 board. But I just cannot bring myself to pay $400 for 32GB of value DDR4, let alone $750 for a kit that has nicer heat spreaders and runs a higher frequency. I may just go 4930K + X79 + add 32GB DDR3 for a total of 64GB in the end. I'm interesting in building a compute beast. I will be adding a third Titan shortly and would love to have the 5960X but damn that DDR4 RAM...

I also don't understand how one can use 13GB in Chrome. I only use more than 16GB because of virtual machines, as well as running computational problems occasionally that will fill up all available RAM quickly with mesh/grid refinement

 

[_Rick_]

Then Chrome has serious memory leaks and needs to be avoided.

I wish I could avoid it, but IE isn't ready for primetime, Opera is either broken or just a rebadged Chrome, and phoenix err firebird err firefox is apparently worse in every regard, including memory usage, than Chrome.

But yeah, it leaks pretty badly, two current chrome tabs each take 2.5GBs right now. That can't be right, can it?

 

[coffeejunkee]

Hmm, I'd say it's Chrome that isn't ready for primetime. I guess some folks would consider me a giant nerd but somehow I manage with IE just fine. Tabs on this forum use less than 100MB.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Hmm, I'd say it's Chrome that isn't ready for primetime. I guess some folks would consider me a giant nerd but somehow I manage with IE just fine. Tabs on this forum use less than 100MB.

I think there were rumors before the millennium that IE had security problems, even though the patches and updates addressed those problems. People migrated to Netscape, then Firefox, Chrome, etc.

I thought it made more sense to keep things simple and stick with IE. Never had a problem, really .. .