CPU and RAM

[Frederich]

ok, I m about to buy a 'self configured' laptop for moderate gaming and adobe publishing , photo editing purpose (using a big second screen). I d go for a standard i7-4700MQ processor.

I read on wikipedia about quad core (which I suppose the i7-4700MQ is)
quote : "DDR3 Quadruple-channel architecture is used in ( . . . part left out . . .) The architecture can only be used when all four, or a multiple of four, memory modules are identical in capacity and speed, and are placed in quad-channel slots "

Does this mean that all 4 ram slots should be used (occupied) to take full advantage of the quad core ? And would this make a big difference against only 2 slots used (with lets say 2 times 8GB).

Hoping for some easy to understand :$ answers.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

There are very few systems that support quad-channel RAM. The i7-4700MQ processor contains a dual-channel RAM controller, so it will perform the same whether there are two or four sticks of RAM installed.

http://ark.intel.com/products/75117

What laptop are you looking at? I'd be surprised if it had four RAM slots...

 

[2x4b]

The number of CPU cores and the number of Memory Controller channels is unrelated in any way.

The memory controller is part of the motherboard and will often split it its work into two channels that will allow for some parallelism to increase performance. In higher end hardware four channels may be employed to provide additional parallel operation, although the increase in performance does not scale as well as you might think. None of this is related to the number of cores in a CPU.

The CPU relies upon a single interface between the chip and the memory controller for its data, but the contents of memory are put into a single common cache area (although it often has multiple tiers of cache for performance reasons) in the CPU regardless of the number of cores.

In other words, forget everything I said, and just read your motherboard's (system's) manual for what specifications of memory will work on that machine and buy as much as you can afford. (don't mix memory of different types or specifications)

 

[Frederich]

Thanks for both replies. I had already been bothering the manufacturor about the way hybrid ssdHD work so I didnt want to ask any more 'noob' questions before actually buying. But these answers make I m ready to make my choice. It will be a BTO laptop, and I ll go for 16 or 24 GB Ram, maybe HyperX High performance ram , main disk 250 SSD, 2ndHD Hybrid . XBOOK 17CL56. :

http://www.bto.eu/html/configureer.asp?PartnerID=1&DisplayPartnerID=1&ProductID=619&lang=nl