why do no socket 775 mb's support > 8gb of ram?

[Maezr]

the woodcrest / conroe cpu's seem about the same if you only want one cpu in the machine. but the equivilent woodcrest costs significiantly more.

the only reason I'm considering woodcrest is simply so I can have more ram. is this my only option? is there some fundamental reason why 775 mb's can't support >8gb of ram?

 

[JustaGeek]

Why in the world would you need >8GB of RAM...?

By the time the software for >8GB of RAM is created, you will need DDR4 or something.

Only Photoshop can potentially use up to 8GB of RAM - nothing else on the market today.

 

[Maezr]

for a cheap server

 

[firewolfsm]

Current RAM density only allows for 2GB on one stick, motherboards have 4 slots...do the math.

 

[Maezr]

but why aren't they able to add more slots on 775 when they can on 771, etc?

 

[ultra laser]

775 is a desktop socket and 99.9% of desktop users don't require 8GB+ RAM.

 

[Heidfirst]

abit's nVidia 680i chipset mobo IN9 32X does
"Supporting up to a maximum of 32GB of dual channel DDR2-800 Unbuffered/ECC or Non-ECC memory in 4 DIMM slots." so I guess that other 680is do too ...

 

[nyker96]

why do you need that much RAM for? If you doing heavy duty stuff, maybe get a server board//setup is better. desktop stuff just aren't made for that sort of things.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Heidfirst
abit's nVidia 680i chipset mobo IN9 32X does
"Supporting up to a maximum of 32GB of dual channel DDR2-800 Unbuffered/ECC or Non-ECC memory in 4 DIMM slots." so I guess that other 680is do too ...

Although it may support that much RAM the most you can put into it is still 8GB because there's only 4 slots and the largest DDR2 modules I've seen are 2GB.

 

[Heidfirst]

op's question was " is there some fundamental reason why 775 mb's can't support >8gb of ram?" & I was just pointing out that there are boards/chipsets on 775 which do support more than 8Gb.
Whether we'll see larger than 2Gb DIMMs on DDR2 I don't know but I bet you that we do on DDR3 & that a 775 mobo/chipset will exist to take them.

 

[Cutthroat]

My guess is that even when we do see modules larger than 2GB that the current motherboard which say they support 8GB could support more with no more than a BIOS update. But my point was that currently you cannot put more than 8GB in a desktop board, so that's likely why they say that's how much they support.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Maezr
the only reason I'm considering woodcrest is simply so I can have more ram. is this my only option? is there some fundamental reason why 775 mb's can't support >8gb of ram?

Yeah, because > 8GB RAM is server board territory. Get a server board if you want a server. Man I'm a genius for thinking of that.

 

[hans007]

the largest memory chips that are cheap you can get right now are 128MBytes currently and even these cost more than the more common 64MB chips (thats why most 1gb dimms are double sided... and 2 double sided 1gb dimms tend to cost more than 1 single double sided 2gb dimm).

thats 16 chips for 2 gigs on 1 dimm. i dont think the jedec standard allows more than 16 chips, though theres probably registered dimms or fb-dimms which can address more than 16 chips.

771 boards all have fb-dimms with memory buffers / controller on each board.

i would assume if 256MB chips get produced en masse (these would be 2 gigabit) that 4gb dimms would appear more. there were announcements earlier this year that some were being produced. chipsets that support that much would concievably be able to use those, probably with a bios update.

then again 4 4gb dimms would probably cost like $4000

 

[Peter]

Largest chip technology is 2 Gbit, which makes the maximum size for an unbuffered (read: consumer grade) 16-chip DIMM be 4 GBytes, total for a four-DIMM board would be 16 GByte.

Most of the consumer grade chipsets don't support 2-Gbit RAM chips though, and that's where the 8-gig limit stems from. Traditionally, it's always been the non-Intel chipsets that supported bigger chips first. See above, choose NVidia.

Server grade chipsets, while often enough still not supporting the really large chips, use "registered" or "fully buffered" DIMMs which allow twice as many chips on a DIMM, hence a larger total. On top of that, with either of these technologies, more DIMM slots are electrically feasible. None of that is for free - chipsets are more complex, register/buffer chips cost money, board estate comes at a cost too.