Dual DIMM Support: Biostar's Hi-Fi H170Z3 Offers Both DDR3 And DDR4

[kcarbotte]

Biostar launched the H170 mATX motherboard with DDR3 and DDR4 DIMMs, making the transition to Intel's latest platform a little easier.

Dual DIMM Support: Biostar's Hi-Fi H170Z3 Offers Both DDR3 And DDR4 : Read more

 

[TechyInAZ]

Looks nice! Glad they have this feature!

Reminds me of the old days when there were DDR3 and DDR2 dims on the same motherboard.

 

[Chiara2012]

Awesome..


Now we will see ddr3 vs ddr4 tests with Intel's 6th gen processors.


Hurry up guys!

 

[jimmysmitty]

Looks nice! Glad they have this feature!

Reminds me of the old days when there were DDR3 and DDR2 dims on the same motherboard.

This is pretty common for Intel, in fact they have done this with every DDR change (there were DDR1&2 boards, DDR2&3 boards). It only makes sense considering that DDR4 is still expensive and since this is their mainstream market, probably one of their top selling consumer markets, it only makes sense to cover the broadest range of consumers out there as most people who don;t care about the cost for DDR4 went to it with Haswell-E.

That said, I am wondering if there needs to be a correction to the article. Everything we have been presented with was saying Skylake supports DDR3L which means not all current DDR3 will be supported.

 

[Sakkura]

PCIe 3.0 x4 is 4 times the bandwidth of 2.0 x2, so "over 3 times" is a slightly silly description.

Oh, and as for DDR3L, that's just DDR3 at 1.35V. Most 1.5V kits should work, but perhaps at lower than rated clocks.

 

[kcarbotte]

PCIe 3.0 x4 is 4 times the bandwidth of 2.0 x2, so "over 3 times" is a slightly silly description.

Oh, and as for DDR3L, that's just DDR3 at 1.35V. Most 1.5V kits should work, but perhaps at lower than rated clocks.

maximum throughput for Gen2x2 M.2 is 10Gb/s
maximum throughput for Gen3x4 M.2 is 32Gb/s

 

[alidan]

Looks nice! Glad they have this feature!

Reminds me of the old days when there were DDR3 and DDR2 dims on the same motherboard.

This is pretty common for Intel, in fact they have done this with every DDR change (there were DDR1&2 boards, DDR2&3 boards). It only makes sense considering that DDR4 is still expensive and since this is their mainstream market, probably one of their top selling consumer markets, it only makes sense to cover the broadest range of consumers out there as most people who don;t care about the cost for DDR4 went to it with Haswell-E.

That said, I am wondering if there needs to be a correction to the article. Everything we have been presented with was saying Skylake supports DDR3L which means not all current DDR3 will be supported.

if you are building a 100% new system, as i will be due to being on ddr2, the price difference between 3 and 4 is negligible now, looking at 2 8gb sticks, ddr3 from gskill costs 75$ and ddr4 costs 110$ and when an overall system will cost you 600-2000 depending on parts, the 35$ difference on ram is negligible, id rather have have 4 ddr4 slots than 2 just for future upgrades when ddr4 does hit rock bottom price range, a ram disk used as scratch or for loading massive things while hooked up to battery backup would be awesome.

 

[Sakkura]

PCIe 3.0 x4 is 4 times the bandwidth of 2.0 x2, so "over 3 times" is a slightly silly description.

Oh, and as for DDR3L, that's just DDR3 at 1.35V. Most 1.5V kits should work, but perhaps at lower than rated clocks.

maximum throughput for Gen2x2 M.2 is 10Gb/s
maximum throughput for Gen3x4 M.2 is 32Gb/s

Only if you're dumb enough to ignore overhead.

Maximum bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 x2 is 1 GB/s
Maximum bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x4 is 4 GB/s (actually very slightly less, but that's a detail)

 

[joex444]

From the actual article above,

> The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32 Gb/s, which is over three times faster than Gen2x2 sockets.

Nowhere does it talk about PCIe 3.0 x4 vs PCIe 2.0 x2.

If you wanted to pick at nits, I'd've started with how "It's over three times *faster*" means that it's at least FOUR times as fast. It should be "The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32Gb/s, which is more than three times as fast as Gen2x2 sockets."

 

[joex444]

From the actual article above,

> The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32 Gb/s, which is over three times faster than Gen2x2 sockets.

Nowhere does it talk about PCIe 3.0 x4 vs PCIe 2.0 x2.

If you wanted to pick at nits, I'd've started with how "It's over three times *faster*" means that it's at least FOUR times as fast. It should be "The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32Gb/s, which is more than three times as fast as Gen2x2 sockets."

 

[Sakkura]

From the actual article above,

> The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32 Gb/s, which is over three times faster than Gen2x2 sockets.

Nowhere does it talk about PCIe 3.0 x4 vs PCIe 2.0 x2.

If you wanted to pick at nits, I'd've started with how "It's over three times *faster*" means that it's at least FOUR times as fast. It should be "The Gen3x4 socket can operate at up to 32Gb/s, which is more than three times as fast as Gen2x2 sockets."

Gen3x4 and Gen2x2 means PCIe 3.0 x4 and PCIe 2.0 x2. In this case all delivered with the M.2 interface, but that doesn't matter for the bandwidth.

And again, the fact is that 3.0 x4 gives you ~4 times as much actual bandwidth. The higher overhead of PCIe 2.0 really shouldn't count in its favor.