IcedEarth

I'm not sure if this has been proven or if it is just a theory.

The reason people will give you is because it will take longer for the pc to search 8gb of RAM compared to 4GB.

Whether it holds any truth or not is another matter

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Darkvette

It's worth a shot to find out though.

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"When in doubt, overclock!! If that doesn't work, overclock some more!! If all else fails throw it out the window and be done with it!!" - Anon.

SgtHawker

One thing I have heard is that 4 sticks of memory tax the bus and power of the controller, effectively slowing down the memory. Increasing the memory voltage in BIOS can possibly prevent this slowdown, allowing the 4 sticks of memory to run at the fastest settings they are capable of. Matched memory should help this issue, that is why you are seeing 4 matched memory sticks in kits now, so they all run the same.

Darkvette

It can. I've heard that as well, especially with Vista. Microsoft actually has a patch out for users running more than 4GB of RAM in Vista. Eventually I'd like to test the theory, but $$ are short right now.

__________________
3DMark06 = 14714
Performance Test 6.1 (x64) = 1386.4

ATI Red Tide!!

"When in doubt, overclock!! If that doesn't work, overclock some more!! If all else fails throw it out the window and be done with it!!" - Anon.

BrightSide

Having 8GB of RAM wouldnt result in slower performance, but having 4 sticks instead of 2 would, if your using 1066 Mhz sticks at least. The CPU can only handle 1 stick of 1066 Mhz per channel, giving a maksimum of 2 sticks. If you add more than that, the memory will be slowed down to 800 Mhz to maintain stability.

xeeki

Really? I didn't know that, could've been really frustrating if you bought 8 GB of 1066 MHz RAM, and it didn't work fully. :P

Darkvette

BrightSide is right. I bought 2 different kits to test that out (all G.Skill), and here's what I found.

-- 8GB(4x2GB) of DDR2-1066
-- 8GB(4x2GB) of DDR2-800

With the 1066 RAM and 4GB in 1 channel, worked fine at 1066. With all 8GB in dual channel mode, like he said, it went down to 800MHz. Now, the interesting thing is that the Phenom chips have their own internal memory controller. I tried running the 8GB of the 1066 in single channel mode, and it ran fine for about 10 minutes at 1066MHz - before it BSOD'd on me, maybe a bad set of chips, I don't know - but something you might want to try.

With the 800 RAM, I was able to OC both 4GB in channel 1 and all 8GB in single and dual channel modes up to 1066 without any hassles. It's still running stable as can be.

Kind of interesting. I ended up returning the 1066 kit, esp since I wasn't gonna use it anymore anyway.

__________________
3DMark06 = 14714
Performance Test 6.1 (x64) = 1386.4

ATI Red Tide!!

"When in doubt, overclock!! If that doesn't work, overclock some more!! If all else fails throw it out the window and be done with it!!" - Anon.

Enigma8750

So what is the Answer? Which is Better? Ganged or UnGanged? Which is faster? Which would be the best for Overclocking?

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PepsiLove

I don't think either would be better, its just an option for letting you overclock your cpu without overclocking your ram. If your ram can oc then leave it ganged, if it can't then stick it on unganged

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e5200@4ghz
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pixie

umm, no. it'll OC your ram whether you have it Ganged or UnGanged.

Ganged is just forced Dual Channel (128bit) and UnGanged is forced Single Channel (64bit).