Core i7: 3GB vs 6GB Memory Benched

[HaZ]

Planning to build your brand spanking new Intel i7 based gaming system with that fancy new Intel X58 Express board? Just make sure you toss 6GB of memory into the mix for the best possible experience, according to Corsair’s recent study.

Core i7: 3GB vs 6GB Memory Benched : Read more

 

[Pei-chen]

This should be top new next to the 4870 X2 reviews.

 

[frankscastle]

Anybody else saying "duh". I thought 8gb was the "sweet spot" for vista 64-bit, anyway?http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vista-workshop,1775.html I will wait to see 12gb bench marks before I get all worked up.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Perhaps I just expect more, but I don't see the average improvement to be anything worth twice the money. ddr3 is expensive as it is!

 

[Guest]

I think that they mean 1600 MHz on the ram clock, not 16000 MHz.

 

[trinix]

6 gigs is better, now I'd love to see a review where we would take one part or the other and see if you are on a budget, what would be best to safe on.

Get a better processor, memory or vidcard for example. Other than that, thanks, it's nice to know that more is better. Though we already knew that.

 

[velo116]

I don't understand why despite having 3GB of ram the games don't max out the 3GB. Why can't the same results be acheived with 4GB as all of the total windows memory usages are under 4gb??

 

[scook9]

WAIT, YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT CORSAIR IS SAYING MORE MEMORY IS BETTER?!??! NO WAY!!!

wow...really.... thats like intel taking a quad core and saying they work better. Why doesnt TOMS do a article on this, not the memory manufacturer.

 

[kschoche]

Could this have anything to do with the locality of the data in memory? Having to hit a memory stick physically farther away from the onboard memory actually affects performance and having higher density sticks would ideally reduce having to go farther away (stick 2/3 instead of 1) , but I guess not by *this* much??

 

[nihility]

Anyone else wondering if 4GB would be enough to see the same results? There are some articles about the performance difference between dual and tri-channel and they're really small.

 

[Guest]

Yeah i'd like to know if the same results occur with 4 GB of ram as i'm still rockin my LGA 775 q9550

 

[Guest]

For nihility: with 3x64-wide memory controllers, you want a multiple of 3 memory modules.

I'm curious how it would behave with 12GB. I *know* that for the GIS processing I'm doing (IBM INtellistation/Opteron/Linux based),
16GB is _lots_ faster than even 8 GB...

 

[lopopo]

"Just make sure you toss 6GB of memory into the mix for the best possible experience, according to Corsair’s recent research."

enough said

 

[seboj]

WAIT, YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT CORSAIR IS SAYING MORE MEMORY IS BETTER?!??! NO WAY!!!

wow...really.... thats like intel taking a quad core and saying they work better. Why doesnt TOMS do a article on this, not the memory manufacturer.

QFT. Seriously, this should be on the footnote page for a test bench that Tom's actually does themselves, not a full article itself. When did we start caring what the manufacturers claim?

There should be a disclaimer at the top of this page that reads:

WARNING: TOM'S WAS PAID TO ANNOUNCE THAT CORSAIR WANTS YOU TO BUY MORE RAM. WHO'DA THUNKIT?

 

[Tjik]

Thankfully I see some have reading skills because I fear that most won't notice that this isn't an independent test by Tom's Hardware.

The title says: "Report: 3GB vs 6GB RAM on Core i7 Benched", suggesting this is a hardware related result. I however doubt that hardware plays such a big role here, since it just as well could be Vista related. Unfortunately Vista seems to lack ability to scale well in accordance to amount of RAM available. Looking at the results I'm more inclined to say we see an example of bad code.

 

[tuannguyen]

Hi All -

Just wanted to chime in a quick note to clarify that this news piece is about a report done by Corsair engineers. It's mentioned in the article that it's not from us. If you find the information useful for buying decisions for Core i7, take advantage of it. If not, that's cool too!

The report is about 3GB vs. 6GB memory. In some instances, Corsair's report even indicates that there's virtually no difference in performance gains -- in other areas, there are.

Once you've made up your mind on whether double memory is useful, the best thing to do is do some shopping for your favorite brand and go from there.

Corsair did not buy this coverage nor did it gift us for it. We just felt it was an interesting study between 3GB and 6GB memory on Intel's latest Core i7 platform -- not about the Corsair brand.

/ Tuan

 

[Guest]

Latest core i7 platform? there was an earlier one? COOL!!! lol

 

[Shadow703793]

What I want to know is dose the RAM speed effect performance since it now has a IMC?

 

[tsnor]

1. Note vista 64 was used even in the 3GB test. Vista 32 would be a better, higher performing 3GB solution
2. Dual Channel enambed with both the 3GB and 6GB configs? Or were 1/2 the dimms pulled leaving a single channel?
3. As noted everywhere, this is not a Tom's review.

 

[JonnyDough]

Just make sure you toss 6GB of memory into the mix for the best possible experience, according to Corsair’s recent research.

In other news:

Ford says you should own at least five of Ford vehicles for the best driving experience, the National Dairy Association says you should be drinking 5 cows worth of milk a day for the best health, and Coke says that Pepsi is bad for you. Seriously?

Why would you take any test results into real consideration that come from a company with a vested interest in selling you more of what they're saying you need?

Marketing 101. If you believe everything you read please go to school and take it.

 

[fulle]

For the person that asked if dual channel mode was disabled on the 3GB kit... I would doubt it. Corsair wouldn't want to give the impression that their 3GB kit was inferior in performance to competitors. The only difference seems to be the amount of memory used. Its obvious that the information carries bias, given that Corsair makes memory, but the results are interesting.

The positive effect on the minimum framerates in all the games seemed substantial. The Crysis Warhead FRAPS test was especially interesting to me.

Can Toms be troubled to give us an unbiased set of benchmarks on this?

 

[tomsregistrationsucks]

I would like to see Tom talk the d*ck out of his mouth. Since that newegg deal I see quite a bit of corporate dong being sucked.

I am a huge fan of newegg by the way but this article is f*cking retarded.

 

[randomizer]

Of course you should take the results with a grain of salt, but that doesn't mean you should disregard them altogether. As Tuan said, you can read this and then go and buy another brand. There will undoubtedly be less "questionable" benchmarks comparing 3GB and 6GB (and more hopefully) in the future which you can look at too, but until there is this is all that you can look at.

 

[bf2gameplaya]

Take this piece of rubbish of Tom's now, please.

 

[zodiacfml]

this is nonsense. how could ram increase framerates if the memory is not even saturated.
i could have believed that it will increase minimum framerates when a game is first loaded since there are games that allow you to play while at the same loading textures but increased maximum frame rates it is just not believable. if toms did a similar benchmark we'd see no differences at all.
hell, there's no useful difference in using the third channel on the ram. a dual channel config DD3 would suffice.