3GB, 6GB or 12GB Investigated
Introduction
Published: 27th March 2009 | Source: Corsair | Price: £61, £94, £200 |
With the advent of a triple channel memory controller on Intel's latest CPU, enthusiasts have been forced to ask a new question: Which memory configuration is best? A simple question that usually provokes more questions and debate than perhaps any other component in a PC system.
Just a couple of years ago it was a simple choice. Get the fastest 2GB kit you can afford. With Windows Vista consuming (or should I say utilising) more memory than XP and 64bit becoming the operating system of choice, 4GB kits were rapidly becoming the norm. DDR2 prices though were and still are, very cheap so a £50 investment was not going to bankrupt anybody anytime soon. This changed however with DDR3 and for the most part, the reasoning behind most people opting to stick with DDR2. The price of DDR3 has lowered slightly but it is still significantly higher than DDR2 and if you want the latest CPU from Intel and want to get the most out of it, a triple DDR3 kit must be on your shopping list. Luckily for us, the prices have dropped enough now that kits can be bought for little more than DDR2 so the damage is not too great.
But what size kit should you buy? 3 GB would be enough for most people surely? What of the rumours that 6GB is now the standard and gives the best performance? Should I go for broke and get 12GB, after all bigger is always better right? Thanks to Corsair, who have kindly provided OC3D with 3 different kits, these are the questions I hope to answer in todays article.
All the kits we intend to use for todays review have the same timings, same frequency and being from Corsair, one of the worlds for most memory module manufacturers, compatability will hopefully not be an issue. The results will hopefully also give a true account of how memory capacity affects system performance. I will be interesed in how memory capacity limits the CPU overclock because with Intels 4 series chipsets anthing over 4GB proved difficult to get stable at high overclocks. With the memory controller now on-board the CPU rather than being controlled separately from the Northbridge, I suspect that the extra heat generated will increase with memory size as more stress is placed on the memory controller and with heat usually goes hand in hand with a decrease in potential overclocks. How much so we will find out later in the review.
Specifications
The specifications for the three kits up for review today were taken directly from Corsair's website.
| TR3X3G1333C9 | TR3X6G1333C9 | HX3X12G1333C9 | |
| Capacity | 3GB | 6GB | 12GB |
| Speed | 1333MHz | 1333MHz | 1333MHz |
| Timings | 9-9-9-24 | 9-9-9-24 | 9-9-9-24 |
| Voltage | 1.5v | 1.5v | 1.5v |
| Price | £61.07 | £94.42 | £200.22 |
As you can see, there's not a great deal between them bar the price and the capacity. Let's hope there's more to distinguish the kits in our run of benchmarks but before we test the kit, let's delve a little deeper in the requirements of triple channel DDR3...
Most Recent Comments
Plus if you had several 32 bit apps open than utilised 2gb, then as a whole the 64 bit os would use more than just the 32 bit limit.
Plus if you had several 32 bit apps open than utilised 2gb, then as a whole the 64 bit os would use more than just the 32 bit limit.
Yep thats exactly how I use HCI Memtest to test the memory in Windows :)
Great review, nice to see a pretty thorough assesment of it all. I agree with Bungral, I regularly have paintshop pro, firefox, outlook, itunes and a couple of other programs running which are generally 32bit, and never run low on memory because I have 8GB of RAM. Sure I could get away with 4GB, but vista is that much snappier on more ram. Also its nice to see a comment on all sizes of ram (unlike a tom's hardware article from a few months back).
I think the review nicely balances the needs of the heavier user against cost and comes out with 6gb being the sweet spot. I think debating whether we want dual or triple channel is irrelevant because we've got triple and that's not going to change in the short term.
I think the review nicely balances the needs of the heavier user against cost and comes out with 6gb being the sweet spot. I think debating whether we want dual or triple channel is irrelevant because we've got triple and that's not going to change in the short term.
But that will change really fast, really soon.
We've been saying that for years, and I can quite confidently say - no it won't ;)
We've been saying that for years, and I can quite confidently say - no it won't ;)
AMD launched AMD64 8 years ago. Back then it was a small company's cry for survival, just a little gimmick to fool us all. Intel came on board later. We are just starting to come on board. The problem is not with them, it is with us. We took this long to see the value in the technology.
These days the voices in my head speak big words like "virtualization" and "cloud computing" and other stuff that I don't know the meaning of yet. The voices are getting louder.
At work I have at least 3 virtual machines online on my workstation, trying to keep temp builds as clean as possible, trying to pre-test the code on different OS's. They eat up RAM like there's no tomorrow.
At home I have just one or two, occasionally. One is some random linux distrib the other is windows 7, just for fun.
We're not all just playing games you know... so crazy little me wants all the RAM crazy little me can afford...
Yep, probably crazy.
I would just like to say Than You for a very interesting review w3bbo.
As a fairly average user with ideas that exceed my technical knowledge and certainly my pocket, the review showed me a common sense answer to my requirements.
I am at present running win7 on a Q9550 cpu with 4gb of Crucial ballistics 1066 ram. I have been thinking of upgrading, but replacing board, ram and cpu all at once is a bit expensive for me. However when I do upgrade shortly, I would have seen 12gb kits availlable and would have tried to go with that, to save upgrading again later. Your review has shown me that 6gb of DDR3 would be enough for my requirements to run the system well, without the need for extra expense, especially as a 12gb kit is more than double the price of a 6 gb kit, which I find surprising? I would have expected 12gb to be around the £180 mark to encourage us to splash out a bit more. Anyway basically 6gb is essential, 12gb would be a nice bonus, 3gb forget it, which I believe sums up the conclusions in a nutshell.
Regardless, thanks again for the great review and all the time you put in to do it properly. Very useful for me.:)
As a fairly average user with ideas that exceed my technical knowledge and certainly my pocket, the review showed me a common sense answer to my requirements.
I am at present running win7 on a Q9550 cpu with 4gb of Crucial ballistics 1066 ram. I have been thinking of upgrading, but replacing board, ram and cpu all at once is a bit expensive for me. However when I do upgrade shortly, I would have seen 12gb kits availlable and would have tried to go with that, to save upgrading again later. Your review has shown me that 6gb of DDR3 would be enough for my requirements to run the system well, without the need for extra expense, especially as a 12gb kit is more than double the price of a 6 gb kit, which I find surprising? I would have expected 12gb to be around the £180 mark to encourage us to splash out a bit more. Anyway basically 6gb is essential, 12gb would be a nice bonus, 3gb forget it, which I believe sums up the conclusions in a nutshell.
Regardless, thanks again for the great review and all the time you put in to do it properly. Very useful for me.:)
Wow, nice to hear feedback like that. Cheers, glad I could help.:)
DDR3 is dropping dramatically though so 12GB might fit alot of peoples budgets now.
DDR3 is dropping dramatically though so 12GB might fit alot of peoples budgets now.
It would be perfect if I-Ram for ddr3 exists...
CSS Valid
Do you mean patches the program to allow more memory to be allocated? There's an app that patches 32-bit programs so they can allocate more than their 2GB limit. I used one on HCI Memtest and before I could only allocated 1792MB to each app and after it could use 2.5GB. Didn't affect the program stability either :)