Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, Thresher
BrianLR wrote:I want to put together a new system based on a Sandy Bridge 2600K CPU with the maximum possible memory of 32 Gb. The P67 MoB is specified to take 4 x 8GB non ECC RAM, but such 8GB RAM modules do not appear to be available yet, can anyone tell me what is the projected date for these to be on the market? One or two vendors are selling 8GB ECC RAM modules, would these work?
StuG wrote:I think there is something weird with ECC and run of the mill Intel CPU's. I think you have to pay extra or something to get the ability to properly use it? I'm not sure, maybe someone else with more knowledge on the subject can clarify.
DancinJack wrote:The 2600K doesn't even support ECC memory. You'll have to wait for SNB Xeons.
UberGerbil wrote:And actually, Moore's Law or not, I don't think 32GB will be all that common in a couple of years.
just brew it! wrote:If you're looking at supporting insane amounts of RAM without selling your firstborn, have you considered an AMD Opteron based solution?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813182240
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819105266
8 DIMM sockets, so you can get to 32GB even with current 4GB unregistered DIMMs; it'll also take registered DIMMs for a maximum of 64GB today, and up to 128GB in the future (once 16GB registered DIMMs become available).
Probably quite a bit cheaper than equivalent Xeon gear...
Downside is the PCIe x16 slot runs at only x8; but since this isn't a gaming rig, that shouldn't be an issue.
StuG wrote:Will you really need the GTX460 for anything? Seems like more to the budget than it would need to be.
just brew it! wrote:If you're looking at supporting insane amounts of RAM without selling your firstborn, have you considered an AMD Opteron based solution?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813182240
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819105266
8 DIMM sockets, so you can get to 32GB even with current 4GB unregistered DIMMs; it'll also take registered DIMMs for a maximum of 64GB today, and up to 128GB in the future (once 16GB registered DIMMs become available).
Probably quite a bit cheaper than equivalent Xeon gear...
Downside is the PCIe x16 slot runs at only x8; but since this isn't a gaming rig, that shouldn't be an issue.
BrianLR wrote:I have receieved an answer to my original question When will 8Gb modules be availble for P67/H67 Boards ? A Kingston rep says that the 8GB unbuffered modules won’t be out until Q3/Q4 this year, and when they do appear they will be very expensive!
BrianLR wrote:Yes they will. Just as 4GB were for DDR2, and 2GB were for DDR, and 1GB were for SDR. The last, most capacious models for each technology always demand bleeding-edge prices. Eventually they may drift down to more reasonable prices, if a successor tech doesn't appear to move the whole ladder up a rung. That's why several people in this thread were suggesting options that offered more slots, rather than planning on cramming the maximum into each slot.A Kingston rep says that the 8GB unbuffered modules won’t be out until Q3/Q4 this year, and when they do appear they will be very expensive!
just brew it! wrote:Of course as you're well aware we were actually stalled at an effective ~3GB under 32bit, so just the switch to 64GB has liberated an additional 33% on many machines. But the reality is that app developers are looking at virtual memory, not physical memory, so that barrier wasn't a hard constraint; this isn't exactly analogous to the old 1MB (aka 640K) ceiling that really did stall progress for several years. And you're right, very few apps have that voracious an appetite for memory; the few that do are either already available in 64bit versions or were large address aware when running as 32bit apps in a 64bit system. And how many of them are there? Unless you're in the media content business (the Adobe suite, 3D rendering, etc) they're mostly server apps. Even games, that long-time driver of hardware progress, can't get there, hampered as they are by both GPU bottlenecks and their own console cross-platform requirements.I'm kinda torn on this one... I think we basically stalled at 4GB for several years, waiting for the world to finally get on the 64-bit bandwagon. Now that we've (mostly) graduated to 64-bit now, I expect developers to start taking advantage of 8GB+ of RAM. OTOH, it is hard to imagine mainstream apps really needing that much, so maybe it'll remain a niche thing for a while yet.
Yeah, I agree, and I can even push past what was comfortable on a 32bit machine using just browsers -- but that's because I often have 8+ browser windows open, each with 20,30, or 50+ tabs (and some browsers seem to want to hang onto memory for every rotated ad or AJAX update, so they just keep eating memory over time -- I've seen one stupid Reuters page climb into the hundreds of MB when left open overnight). Since most desktop users were living comfortably in 3GB it'll be a while before they feel the need for 8GB; in fact I expect a lot of consumer OEM systems will stick with a single 4GB RAM stick in a single channel of memory, as the Zecate systems are already doing, simply as a way of keeping costs down. Meanwhile the increasing affordability of SSDs may mute the demand for more RAM: it's a lot less obvious you've blown past what fits when you've got flash acting as the backing store for the page file.I've certainly found 8GB to be useful, but I probably fall somewhere slightly beyond "power user" on the spectrum (I tend to use VMs for various things, and VMs eat RAM like there's no tomorrow).
it looks like AMD did not fully implement SSE4.1
BrianLR wrote:A Kingston rep says that the 8GB unbuffered modules won’t be out until Q3/Q4 this year, and when they do appear they will be very expensive!
BrianLR wrote:While Opternon vs Zeon benchmarks may look promising, see http://www.elnexus.com/articles/Opteron-Xeon-Benchmarks-2010.aspx it looks like AMD did not fully implement SSE4.1,