X79 and/or rampage IV OC'ing thread for those of us still left....

[dalekdukesboy]

Yep, but DDR3 is cheap now anyway, at least those 1866 you would want (if not, look for them on ebay or so). That said, I will upgrade to 8x4 GB or 4x4 + 4x8 (48 GB total), if my 16 GB are not enough anymore. It took over 2-3 years for 16 GB to matter, I guess 32 GB or 24 GB will start to matter in 2018 or 2019 by that assumption. Games + background apps that is.

Yeah generally speaking 16 gig is plenty minus those circumstances and unless you play multiple games at once I don't think many games even use over 4-8 gigs of ram tops with all eye candy etc applied. I'm playing around with my board a bit and I saw the setting that appears to make all the difference when you use the 125 strap...you have to change the cpu skew I believe it's called, there are two and normally I have it set at auto but when I used the auto settings for "gamer mode" which uses 125 strap for some reason it sets the skews to -63 I believe...which is highest you can set it. So just a heads up for those who want to use 125 or even try the 166 strap to get dividers to play with memory or other various settings. I got up to 130 Fsb to boot and worked fine, I never tried dialing it in with memory or cpu O.C. entirely but I'm going to try and replicate my tight 2424 mhz settings with cpu at roughly the same speed and see one if it boots and two if it does how close the results are to the ones I had earlier using 100 strap. Also I don't think there is a "pure" quad versus my non pure quad unless there is something I'm missing.

 

[Kanan]

Also I don't think there is a "pure" quad versus my non pure quad unless there is something I'm missing.

What do you mean?

 

[FR@NK]

Man I really need to get my old x79 system up and running.

 

[johnspack]

Here's what I'm talking about for quad channel ram, from my mobo manual, 4 dimms gives you 2 sets of dual channel, and only 8 dimms gives you true quad:

Not sure I understand....

 

[dalekdukesboy]

What do you mean?

Exactly, I'm confused with johnspack's motherboard saying 4 dimms is "two pairs of dual channel" versus "quad" which is what I always thought it was as all my documentation says as well as when I look it up with software on my board etc.

Man I really need to get my old x79 system up and running.

Please do! Love to have you onboard with comments working system or not! Welcome.

Here's what I'm talking about for quad channel ram, from my mobo manual, 4 dimms gives you 2 sets of dual channel, and only 8 dimms gives you true quad:

Not sure I understand....

Unless I don't get quad channel versus dual channel I'd say this is terrible chinese translation or whoever wrote this was drunk and/or high when they wrote it.

Maybe they are technically right with terminology but they are NOT right by not stating 4 dimms is quad channel. It simply is, I looked up the definition and quad channel (meaning 4 of course) is any combination of 4 sticks you can come up with...4, 8, 12, 16 sticks of memory etc. So that whole 4 dimms=dual dual channel...yeah not sure if that's right or if that's double speak for quad channel.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3068081/quad-channel-dual-channel-ram.html

I'm inclined to believe the best answer here...it only makes sense. Why would you need 8 dimms to make quad (4) channel work? Even on common sense that makes...no sense.

Also here is an article describing very well I might add how dual/triple/quad works etc and it backs up everything I just said. You don't NEED 8 dimms for quad, only 4, you only need 8 if you want more gigs of ram for your pc. Also

As an aside I read a few articles on dual vs quad recently out of curiosity, and in real life apps and games etc in most instances there is imperceptible difference between the two.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Crazy voltage, but had a few bluescreens and played it "safe" by cranking them to get this run...however check out that bus speed and cas 8 and almost 4.7 ghz as well! All stable...not bad.

 

[dalekdukesboy]

This thing had more in the tank than I realized, not tested this for stability but considering I couldn't barely get 125 strap to run at all at first, getting it to 137 fsb with almost 2200 mhz memory with CAS 8 is definitely more than I thought possible. Stable at least up to 134 fsb, but at this point I'm just seeing where the limit of cpu/platform is and seeing how far you can go with fsb. If I can get it to cooperate this much at 100 fsb I'll be even happier, for I have better memory dividers there I want to use for 2400+ mhz with overclocking FSB.

 

[johnspack]

Well the stupid quad channel question, is 4 quad in an 8 dimm slot and what is 6 dimms... it seems the answer is different especially with older quad mobos.
4 sticks in 4 individual channels, ie a1, b1, c1, and d1 is 4 separate channels, therefor quad channel. 2 more sticks can be added to b2 and d2, I believe that
will give you dual channel operation So quad access until it reaches that last 2 dimms. It does not drop you to triple channel for all. 8 dimms is 2 dimms mapped per channel, quad.
Edit: some older implementations did not follow this example, see apple.....

 

[Kanan]

Here's what I'm talking about for quad channel ram, from my mobo manual, 4 dimms gives you 2 sets of dual channel, and only 8 dimms gives you true quad:

Not sure I understand....

Yeah it's bull. 2 = dual chan, 3 = tri, 4 = quad, 6 = tri x2, 8 = quad x2.

 

[johnspack]

Well all I know is if all 4 channels are populated, it's in quad channel. On my x58, if I have 5 dimms I get 1 triple channel and 1 dual channel.
So the same holds true in quad. 2 sticks are in dual channel, 3 are in triple, 4 are in quad, 6 are in quad + dual, and 8 is 2 dimms per channel quad.
Again, solved.

 

[Kanan]

Well all I know is if all 4 channels are populated, it's in quad channel. On my x58, if I have 5 dimms I get 1 triple channel and 1 dual channel.
So the same holds true in quad. 2 sticks are in dual channel, 3 are in triple, 4 are in quad, 6 are in quad + dual, and 8 is 2 dimms per channel quad.
Again, solved.

Yep, simply don't use other configs than 4 or 8 Rams.

 

[johnspack]

If you mobo and your cpu's imc are weak, yes. Otherwise I can't see normal operation being degraded by 4x4 + 4x2 operation in normal circumstances. In heavy workstation load environments, of course it may cause instabilities.
Or heavy overclocking. I'll have to test this all out when my parts finally get here.....

 

[dalekdukesboy]

If you mobo and your cpu's imc are weak, yes. Otherwise I can't see normal operation being degraded by 4x4 + 4x2 operation in normal circumstances. In heavy workstation load environments, of course it may cause instabilities.
Or heavy overclocking. I'll have to test this all out when my parts finally get here.....

So...I think you are saying minus a weak IMC use every slot of your mobo with as much gigs per stick as possible? "degraded" is hardly the correct word for 4x4 or 4x2 operation. I say this not due to my configuration but due to what I know regarding it, I had dual channel memory at meh speeds for a while and other than memory benchmarks nothing else suffered or took a hit including games or whatever multi-threaded apps I used. Also I had thought I had posted an article here on real life difference in performance between dual/quad channel but I had not...but that is other reason I think you're way off the mark unless you are using photo compression or other apps that literally use and love every bit of memory you can throw at them...

the article basically tested dual vs quad and minus the Sandra memory benchmark there was almost literal zero difference in every other real life thing they tested...

http://www.pcworld.com
/article/2982965/components/quad-channel-ram-vs-dual-channel-ram-the-shocking-truth-about-their-performance.html?page=2

 

[johnspack]

Not quite, I'm saying the first 4 sticks will be in quad, the last 2 will be in dual. And only 4gb sticks too, not 8gb. I'm going to bench it with this config, then I'll be adding 2 more sticks
for 8x4 operation, and bench it again. Then I'll see if 6 sticks are slower than 8 in quad ect.....

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Not quite, I'm saying the first 4 sticks will be in quad, the last 2 will be in dual. And only 4gb sticks too, not 8gb. I'm going to bench it with this config, then I'll be adding 2 more sticks
for 8x4 operation, and bench it again. Then I'll see if 6 sticks are slower than 8 in quad ect.....

Yep reread it later, sorry I had it backwards...you are absolutely correct saying performance will not be degraded by 4x4 and 4x2 etc and even as I said 2x4 etc...so far all things I've seen in massive majority of circumstances shows quad channel bandwidth just isn't used with current instruction sets and software, but for rare occasions.

 

[Kanan]

If you mobo and your cpu's imc are weak, yes. Otherwise I can't see normal operation being degraded by 4x4 + 4x2 operation in normal circumstances. In heavy workstation load environments, of course it may cause instabilities.
Or heavy overclocking. I'll have to test this all out when my parts finally get here.....

I'm saying this, because I'd simply not want to skip Quad Channel, that's it. Whether it's needed or not, you never know - maybe a program or game needs it soon and then you're angry that you're not on Quad Channel. Also there's simply no reason to go for Tri/Dual-Channel, the price difference is neglible. If you have big money problems, the X platform isn't for you anyway.

 

[johnspack]

After a lot more searching, here, 4 dimms is quad, 6 is quad plus dual, 8 is quad, simple, comes from a qvl dl for my mobo:
It does miss the fact that you can use 3 dimms for triple channel.

 

[johnspack]

Dammit, and found out only the asus ws boards will work with ecc ram, whether you have a xeon or not. So 64gbs will cost a fortune.

 

[Kanan]

Dammit, and found out only the asus ws boards will work with ecc ram, whether you have a xeon or not. So 64gbs will cost a fortune.

Thats a interesting point for sure. And yeah I can confirm Triple Chan works, I had to use it a while

edit: i think my system is rock stable now at 1.37V / 4.5 ghz

 

[johnspack]

Freakin love my new x79 system! Sub 1.3v on offset for 4ghz. So I guess 4.5+ is possible. I'm going to chase a record or 2 I think......

 

[johnspack]

Wow, another benefit of going to x79 from x58... ssd is twice as fast! 10 secs to boot instead of 25!

 

[Kanan]

Nice, enjoy your new system, I always said X79 is great, it has all the essentials for a modern PC (the big 3 of 3's: Sata 3, PCI-E 3 and USB 3).

 

[dalekdukesboy]

Yeah, x58, wow I had an evga classified board and 920 for that system...the x79 is what I replaced it with and started this thread about obviously. Yeah one part of my system that is probably oldest other than a few fans is my harddrive, it's a Raptor 10k rpm hard drive...no SSD or PCI-E drives or super fast solid state type drives for me yet! Partially because I never have tried to swap drive contents to a new one and it's just the one piece I haven't updated since I bought it many moons ago, at some point when I can I'll join the SSD crowd and try cloning drive etc and see how I do.

 

[Kanan]

Well at least that Raptor has decent reaction times.

 

[johnspack]

Well so much for usb3! New mobo was doing weird stuff, stuttering every few moments, audio and mouse cursor. Taking a long time to shut down. So disabled everything to do with the asmedia controller and uninstalled drivers.
Stuck in my usb3 card, and now it's rock solid. Just hit 4.2ghz stable using + offset giving me 1.328-1.332v. I figure that's enough for at least 4.3 or 4. Using turbo. Seriously different animal than x58!