I fried my computer.

[daviddoran]

DDR3 is not expensive as you all think it is.

It has come down a lot in price in the last few months.

New technology? Sorta. Expensive? No.

That may be, but you have to buy all new ram, and your current ram is unused, and you either have to eat it, or sell it, probably at a loss.

So if I were building a new computer from scratch, DDR3 isn't too big a deal, but when you are just transplanting the mobo and cpu, adding all new ram turns it from a medium cost upgrade to a high cost upgrade.

[Yo-Yo Freak]

i don't want to hijack the thread or anything but because you guys are on the topic of RAM i have a quick question for any/all of you.

so the new core i7 MoBo's take a maximum of 24G of DDR3 RAM and have 6 240 pin RAM slots, my question is this. are there any 4G sticks of DDR3 RAM currently on the market? i can only find 2G sticks maximum of DDR3. there are some DDR2 sticks that are 4G each, but i can't seem to find any 4G DDR3 sticks no matter how hard i look. if anybody know of any and has a link to where to buy it i would really appreciate it!

Thanks everybody! ^_^

~YYF

[Ellusionist]

i don't want to hijack the thread or anything but because you guys are on the topic of RAM i have a quick question for any/all of you.

so the new core i7 MoBo's take a maximum of 24G of DDR3 RAM and have 6 240 pin RAM slots, my question is this. are there any 4G sticks of DDR3 RAM currently on the market? i can only find 2G sticks maximum of DDR3. there are some DDR2 sticks that are 4G each, but i can't seem to find any 4G DDR3 sticks no matter how hard i look. if anybody know of any and has a link to where to buy it i would really appreciate it!

Thanks everybody! ^_^

~YYF

I can't answer your question directly, but I can explain a little bit about DDR3 and possibly why DDR3 is only available in multiples of 3.

I'm going to take a totally wild guess.

First of all: DDR3 is more efficient, power-wise. It runs at 1.5V instead of DDR2's 1.8V.

DDR2's speed is figured by taking the base memory clock speed and multiplying it by two of the processor's clock cycles. This is why DDR2-667 memory only runs at 333MHz.

...here comes the part where I'm making an educated guess...

Core i7 chips have three memory channels. This would mean instead of multiplying the "base" memory speed by two, it's multiplied by three. This allows the memory to run at a lower speed, but perform better. (And, as I originally stated, use less power.)

Examples:
[1.8V] DDR2 @ 667MHZ (really equals) 333 x 2
[1.5V] DDR3 @ 800MHz (really equals) 266 x 3

DDR3 is using less power because each channel is running at a lower speed, but with more overall throughput.

Like I said, I can't answer your question directly about DDR3 capacity, but I'd say the 3x multiplier has something to do with it.

[turbonapkin]

i don't want to hijack the thread or anything but because you guys are on the topic of RAM i have a quick question for any/all of you.

so the new core i7 MoBo's take a maximum of 24G of DDR3 RAM and have 6 240 pin RAM slots, my question is this. are there any 4G sticks of DDR3 RAM currently on the market? i can only find 2G sticks maximum of DDR3. there are some DDR2 sticks that are 4G each, but i can't seem to find any 4G DDR3 sticks no matter how hard i look. if anybody know of any and has a link to where to buy it i would really appreciate it!

Thanks everybody! ^_^

~YYF

We're only now seeing the likes of Corsair and OCZ et al start offering 12GB kits using 2GB DIMMS, hopefully in the coming months we should see the arrival of the 4GB DIMM in 12 and 24GB kits, but it may be a while yet!

[lille]

One thing to note about i7 and DDR3, don't buy DDR3 thats running at more than 1.65V, the i7 really doesnt like that ;P

[Yo-Yo Freak]

One thing to note about i7 and DDR3, don't buy DDR3 thats running at more than 1.65V, the i7 really doesnt like that ;P

oh i didn't know that, thanks a bunch right there! ^_^

hmm interesting, what you said about how the DDR3 memory on the i7 is multiplied by 3 because of the tripple channel vs the double channel. i hadent thought of that but now that you mention it it does seem highly likely that that would be the case. its always nice to save a little power ^_^. lol

hopefully they will start making the 4G sticks soon, i almost wunder if i should just stick with 6G of RAM instead of 12 and upgrade the rest when the new stuff comes out.

Thanks everybody for the input, it has helped alot! ^_^

~YYF

[Tsunami]

I think you guys are getting a little confused with the DDR3 memory. you can buy ddr3 ram in duel channel and tri-channel. your core i7 monitor will be able to use both. the difference is with duel channel you are buying 2 sticks of memory compared to 3 sticks w/ the tri channel. of course 3 sticks is going to be more than 2 sticks. at this time there is little performance loss between duel and tri channel memory. this is new tech. and the software is not optimized to use tri-channel memory. check the prices

6gb of tri-channel ram is less than $200 and i have seen it for under $150 on newegg.