Quote Originally Posted by Mosg2 View Post
What's the diff between dual and single channel when it comes to the chip? The I5's and I7's both have 4 physical and 4 virtual cores right?
The difference is between dual channel and triple channel.

i5-700s, i7-800s = P55 chipset = dual channel
i7-900s = x58 chipset = triple channel

The theory is that if your processor speed gets high enough then it ends up waiting for memory transfers by the memory controller. Dual channel technology introduced a second channel along which the memory controller could transfer memory. So on a dual channel system you have 1 channel going to memory bank 1 and another going to memory bank 2. On a triple channel system you have 3 channels going to the 3 memory banks.

The biggest factor for multi-boxers is probably that dual channel boards usually only have 4 DIMM slots due to the dual channel nature of things and you are limited to 8GB RAM until 4GB modules become readily available and then a maximum of 16GB.

With the triple channel boards you usually have 6 DIMM slots on the board which means 12GB RAM right now with a 24GB potential later on.


And all of that is mostly based on cursory glances at Intel's site and wikipedia so don't take my word for it