Core i7 and Games, Memory Testing 6GB vs 3GB

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Mike Clements

Gone but not Forgotten
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Back in April 2008 we tested 4GB vs 2GB. Now that the Core i7 memory offerings are different, we did more testing with 6GB vs 3GB. We got very similar results. Vista with 3GB on i7 is good but 6GB is much better.

APPLICATION NOTE 811
 
Great link Mike. Indeed 6gb seems to be a real sweet spot. Some of us with 4gb are starting to see that fenceline is close. 6gb is a great place to be. Speaking as a Penryn owner though I'm better off jumping to 8gb
 
devil22 said:
Good stuff. Nobody should go 3GB with Core i7, imo.
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If you're using XP then you don't need any more than 3GB. I know a lot of people (including myself) who are staying with XP until Windows 7 comes out, so 6GB would be a waste.
 
SharpieFiend said:
If you're using XP then you don't need any more than 3GB. I know a lot of people (including myself) who are staying with XP until Windows 7 comes out, so 6GB would be a waste.
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Yes but, that is way outside the scope of the test.
 
SharpieFiend said:
If you're using XP then you don't need any more than 3GB. I know a lot of people (including myself) who are staying with XP until Windows 7 comes out, so 6GB would be a waste.
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That's going to be a small group the i7 on XP crowd. Most i7 guys are going to be high end gamers too and thus DX9 is not going to be chosen often
 
GonzoP said:
That's going to be a small group the i7 on XP crowd. Most i7 guys are going to be high end gamers too and thus DX9 is not going to be chosen often
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Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems... Very few businesses have made the upgrade to Vista and they will be buying the majority of i7 systems. Why spend the money on 6GB when you're not going to use it?
 
SharpieFiend said:
Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems... Very few businesses have made the upgrade to Vista and they will be buying the majority of i7 systems. Why spend the money on 6GB when you're not going to use it?
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Most people regardless of being a gamer or not who are targeting i7 probably use their computer for things where it would be more beneficial to have 6gb [Vista64] versus 3gb. Lots of video encoding, heavy Adobe use. i7 + 6gb better than i7 +3gb
 
"6 x DIMM, max. 12GB, DDR3 1600(O.C.) / 1333 / 1066 MHz, non-ECC, un-buffered memory Triple channel memory architecture Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)* Refer to www.asus.com or this user manual for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists)"


So I believe it does.
 
SharpieFiend said:
Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems... Very few businesses have made the upgrade to Vista and they will be buying the majority of i7 systems. Why spend the money on 6GB when you're not going to use it?
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It's just a guess on my part but I think he's referring to the [H]OCP crowd, do it yourself guys, etc and not people who don't build their own machines. The paper and the thread is gaming focused. We'll be doing other types of testing later.
 
SharpieFiend said:
Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems... Very few businesses have made the upgrade to Vista and they will be buying the majority of i7 systems. Why spend the money on 6GB when you're not going to use it?
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At the same time, you are on the HARDOCP forum, not the business desktop forum. What, do you think we are benchmarking MS-Word or something? Comon man. Even the name of the memory test article is CORE I7 and GAMES. Whats next? Are you going to chime in with how it makes no difference running your kids Strawberry Shortcake program at home?
 
SharpieFiend said:
Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems... Very few businesses have made the upgrade to Vista and they will be buying the majority of i7 systems. Why spend the money on 6GB when you're not going to use it?
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I've yet to see an i7 system offered with XP. Good luck to businesses buying a bare-bones i7 PC and installing XP on it. I can nearly guarantee they'll be wondering why it's not much faster than their Core2 Duo/Quad machines.
 
Anyone else notice the motherboard picture used in the PDF is not the ASUS P6T Deluxe like they claim?
 
SharpieFiend said:
Yet another person who thinks gamers are the only ones buying high-end systems...
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The title of the article is "Gaming Performance Analysis", it seems pretty clear that its conclusions are intended to apply to gamers rather than business users.
 
I'd like to see the differences between 4GB (what most of us have here) to 6GB. This would be one more weighing factor for me to get into i7 as well. Unfortuantely there's no real way to do those tests accurately. I think the difference from 3GB-4GB is pretty big, but 4GB-6GB almost insignificant.
 
When I upgrade it will be to 12 gb minimum. But this system still has some miles left with a video card upgrade in the near future.
 
GuruX said:
Anyone else notice the motherboard picture used in the PDF is not the ASUS P6T Deluxe like they claim?
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LOL....blame ASUS Marketing. We requested a P6T Deluxe pic and that's what they sent. However, since all benchmarks are at stock, it would make no difference if we had used a RE II.
 
GuruX said:
Anyone else notice the motherboard picture used in the PDF is not the ASUS P6T Deluxe like they claim?
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That's kind of funny seeing that in big letters on the board it says rampage extreme. Pretty much the same thing anyway I would think without the additional ports, esata connections and the xfi. :)
 
Thank you for posting this, I was absolutely on the fence about going for 6GB but it seems very justified after seeing the specs.
 
Mike Clements said:
Back in April 2008 we tested 4GB vs 2GB. Now that the Core i7 memory offerings are different, we did more testing with 6GB vs 3GB. We got very similar results. Vista with 3GB on i7 is good but 6GB is much better.

APPLICATION NOTE 811
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it's great that you release these articles and post them, but i mean... the conclusion is kind of a given. of course you're going to conclude that more memory is better... would the higher ups even let you release an article claiming otherwise?
 
stainremover said:
it's great that you release these articles and post them, but i mean... the conclusion is kind of a given. of course you're going to conclude that more memory is better... would the higher ups even let you release an article claiming otherwise?
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Actually, the conclusion is not a given and you seem to think it is a foregone conclusion. The important thing is that the methodology is documented and repeatable. Therefore, it can be validated by others which gives it technical merit vs a pure marketing claim.
 
Mike Clements said:
Actually, the conclusion is not a given and you seem to think it is a foregone conclusion. The important thing is that the methodology is documented and repeatable. Therefore, it can be validated by others which gives it technical merit vs a pure marketing claim.
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sure, it is documented and repeatable. i did not say the results are illegitimate or fake. i'm suggesting that if there weren't any gains to be had, an article wouldn't have been published. or perhaps you are cherry picking favorable results to publish. both are possible, and you nor the article have not indicated otherwise. i don't know either way - i don't have an i7 to test on. i just think people should take these results with a grain of salt, instead of using it as justification for purchasing twice as much memory.
 
GuruX said:
No 32-bit OS supports more than 4GB of RAM.
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Also, 32-bit Windows is designed so that each 32-bit application can only utilize 2GB of RAM, while 64-bit windows gives each application access to 4GB of RAM.

Basically any game that needs more than 2GB of RAM will crash or act up under a 32-bit OS. So until publishers and developers feel comfortable making a 64-bit OS part of the minimum requirements, games will have to be written so as to work with 2GB of RAM.
 
The thing that sucks about triple channel is that you can buy 4x 2GB sticks in 2x dual channel sets for less than 1 triple channel set of 6GB.

Triple channel sets are such a scam right now.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong - but cant you go with just 3 gb now in tri channel- and then buy the same tri channel sticks when the price lowers?
 
JimmiG said:
Also, 32-bit Windows is designed so that each 32-bit application can only utilize 2GB of RAM, while 64-bit windows gives each application access to 4GB of RAM.

Basically any game that needs more than 2GB of RAM will crash or act up under a 32-bit OS. So until publishers and developers feel comfortable making a 64-bit OS part of the minimum requirements, games will have to be written so as to work with 2GB of RAM.
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Technically, a 32-bit application can access 3GB of RAM if it's enabled in both the application and the OS, but if it's not enabled in the application it could cause stability problems.
 
Ya know guys, someone took the effort to do a reasonable decent technical study and make the results public then took the time to post here so the community could take a look. I assume you all can read, I will go even further out on a limb and guess that most are technically aware enough to digest the study, determine if it applies to you or not and make a determination of the worth of the study to your personal situation. Or not. It is what is it and attacking it unless you can show some deception or error is fairly rude.

On a technical note I wonder how many games are complied to use more than 2GB and/or 64 bit code and I wonder just how much of the extra performance is because the OS is a memory hog. However it is a hog more and more people are using so again, it is what it is.
 
In win64 only programs that state that they're able to use unsigned pointers get access to 4GB* of ram. These're the same ones that could get a 3rd gig under win32 if the /3gb switch is set. Normal win32 apps still only get 2 gigs because their pointer math would blow up otherwise.

* actually just hair under 4GB there're still a handful of small memory chunks reserved for legacy memory mapped hardware.
 
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