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Any good i7 boards that support at least 128GB RAM?


magneto

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Hey magneto,

 

I wanted to give my 2 cents about this. The machines we use at work run dual xeons with 64GB of ECC ram, however I built myself a rig at home using an i7 with faster cores and 64GB of 2400 Ram. You will hear lots of things about how the speed of the ram is a minimal difference etc. However I'm saying from experience that you would have to deliberately try to use that ram up, it is incredibly fast and I definitely notice the difference between ECC 1300/1600 server ram and 2400 quad buffered gaming ram. I've done some huge simulations and the speed at which the 2400 Quad Buffered Ram moves data is ridiculous.

 

The board:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131802

 

The Ram:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231523

Hope this helps.

 

-Nathan

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Thanks narbuckl. I was also split between server build because of RAM vs a consumer build. After Mark's post, I decided consumer build makes more sense :)

 

I also had a similar experience to what you are describing. I didn't have 64GB at work but 16, and I couldn't understand why my home PC was faster than the one at work despite being several years old and them using Xeons, etc. I never bothered to check the RAM speed. So most likely what you are saying then.

 

All I need is 128GB capacity at least on the board so when I only get 64GB for now, I can get another 64GB later on without changing anything and that would hold me even longer.

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The problem is that 16GB DIMMs are currently limited to registered DIMMs (such as ECC), and only Xeons support those. Intel likes to create a lot of artificial product segmentation even amongst the i7/5/3 series (virtualization, boost, SMT, ECC support, VT-x (virtualization)), so it's not too surprising that the Xeons generally have support for more features. Desktop CPUs often don't need a lot of those features anyway, and of course Intel would love to sell you a Xeon for a workstation :)

 

Once 16GB unregistered DIMMs become more mainstream, you'll probably see more motherboards and CPUs support them.

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Thanks guys. What about this image where it says 4 channels. Does that mean it will only support 4 DDR4 slots on the board? Because if so, you would need 32GB sticks to reach that which I don't think will happen for desktops.

 

i7 3930K can take 8x8GB, right? So if these new CPUs are also only limited 64GB, then what's the advantage?

 

I hate artificial product segmentation :)

 

77b.jpg

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A four channel memory configuration can do 4 seperate memory accesses at once. It means that motherboards will have a multiple of 4 slots - either 4 or 8. 12 slots is theoretically possible, but more DIMM modules on a single channel will reduce the memory speed, so it is usually limited to 2 DIMMs per channel. The i7 3800/3900 and 4800/4900 already have 4 channel DDR3 support. DDR4 will bring higher bandwidth at lower power than DDR3, that is the main benefit of Haswell-E's memory controller.

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I wouldn;t wait for DDR4 though, it will take a year or maybe even 2 for those to be anywhere near the pricepoint of DDR3,

and the extra speedgains should not be extremely noticable. (aside from very specific benchmarks but as far as I know Houdini does not scale massively with ramspeeds)

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Thanks guys, now it makes more sense.

 

I see no reason to buy Haswell-E but I am wondering if there are gonna be new i7s that are not Haswell? Also is Haswell-E using the same socket as i7s?

 

Because if not, then it means you will be limited to 64GB an i7 and when you want to change the CPU, you will have to change the board too, right?

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http://anandtech.com/show/7742/im-intelligent-memory-to-release-16gb-unregistered-ddr3-modules

16GB DDR3 modules on the horizon!

Unfortunately, most Intel CPUs won't support them, so might as well wait for DDR4 (or better yet, just install 64GB and toss in a 64GB ssd for swap). I would imagine they'd be almost as pricey as registered 16GB DIMMs.

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Thanks Mark. Your setup with a newer GFX card and 64GB memory is my dream system. My only concern is to be able to upgrade it to 128GB without changing anything else in the future. But it seems like the only culprit is i7s that do not support more than 64GB. Even though there are consumer boards that does support 128GB.

 

Not sure why they are out of sync from each other but I wonder if consumer intel cpus will come out with 128GB memory support or if they will be limited to haswells, if at all? Because haswell advertises having high end models I think. I am not interested in haswell advantages though :)

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  • 5 months later...

Hi there magneto.

 

just came across a really cool article on the x99 platforms.

 

http://thepcenthusiast.com/msi-x99s-sli-plus-motherboard-revealed/

 

Quote...

"The eight DIMM slots will support quad channel, and most probably up to 128GB of memory."

 

out next month:

 

Did you wait ?

 

 

mangi

 

PS:

 

I DID

post-2848-0-39472000-1407710590_thumb.jp

Edited by mangi
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Thanks for updating us man. I am waiting of course :) Do you think this will be available next month though? Or I guess one could use 4 slots at 64GB RAM and then upgrade to 128GB in the future.

 

I wonder how much more development will be there soon. I might wait till the end of this year or the early next year.

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Hi magneto.

Just got some leaks about the x99 mother boards that just came out

nothing is really mentioned about the total amount of ram.

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/gigabyte-x99-soc-force-haswell-e,27435.html

 

Also DDR4 Has hit the market at crucial

 

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/memory

 

& Corsair

 

http://www.techpowerup.com/201680/corsair-dominator-platinum-and-value-select-ddr4-modules-pictured.html

 

 

Hope we can get the total ram spec for these x99 boards.

 

 

 

mangi

Edited by mangi
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Sure will . "Please keep posting"

 

That is positive .... 16GB DDR4 to start out.

 

 

O whats really cool is the new speed of the hard drive M2

 

Boy . itś gona rock , will keep up the leaks okay.

 

Cheers magneto

 

mangi

Edited by mangi
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