8GB

[lopri]

May 21, 2007

Downloaded Intel Ice Storm Fighters demo and ran it with 'High' setting. (There are 'High' and 'Low' setting.) Resolution 1024x768. FPS generally stays in 40~50 with occasional drops to 30s. FRAPS was used to catch screenshots.
Edit: The 'High' and 'Low' difference seems only the number of enemies (aircrafts) High - 20, Low - 10

Q6600 @3200 / GeForce 8600 GT @700/900 / Windows Vista 64-bit

1. http://img398.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112374449jh1.jpg
   http://img398.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112374940lb7.jpg
   http://img398.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112375336he8.jpg
   http://img380.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112375792sm0.jpg
   http://img380.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112380525rr7.jpg
   http://img380.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112381339nx1.jpg
   http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=isfdemo2007052112381755ws7.jpg

-------------------------------------------


Sold my Crucial 10th Anniversary sticks for good price and decided to try out 2GB sticks. Observing how Vista takes advantage of any available memory certainly boosted my greed, and the all-time-record-low DDR2 prices were more than encouraging - NOT. The least expensive 4GB kit (2x2GB) @NewEgg goes for about $300, which still is quite a bit of premium compared to 1GB sticks. Even more frustrating was that it was near impossible to figure out the ICs in different models. So I moved on to a little smaller but trusty e-tailer and found this.

AENEON DDR2-667 2GB

Good news - Aeneon is an OEM channel of Infineon
Bad news - No manufacturer warranty

I picked up 2 sticks and started testing. As expected, reaching DDR2-800 with minimal voltage increase (1.90V) was a piece of cake. So I mated them with 2GB (2x1GB) of FireStix (Micron D9GKX) and boot the system into Vista Ultimate 64-bit!

CPU: Q6600 @3.20GHz (8x400)
HSF: Scythe Andy Samurai Master <- I love everything about this heatsink except its freaky name
Mobo: EVGA NF680i SLI (A1 revision)
Memory: 2x2GB Infineon + 2x1GB Micron
GPU: EVGA 8600 GT

I downloaded 64-bit version Prime95 (didn't know there is 64-bit version till that moment). After a few reboots, the sweet spot I picked for these combo was this:

Quad Prime95 64-bit LargeFFT 2 Hours (Running)
Quad Prime95 64-bit LargeFFT 2 Hours (Stopped)

Vista 64-bit has no problem recognizing all 6GB of memory. Since this was only after a couple hours after I installed these new sticks, SuperFetch hasn't caught up with the increased capacity of system memory yet, though.

Vista 64-bit & 6GB

A few findings (mainly for 680i owners):

1. 1T is impossible with Quad-core + quad-memory (4x4? )
2. From 4GB to 6GB (not from 2 slots to 4 slots) required extra 0.05V on NB (in this case, 1.45 -> 1.50), and extra 0.02V on CPU
3. From 2GB to 6GB (again, not from 2 slots to 4 slots) required extra 0.2V for memory. :shocked: In other words, going from 2GB (2 slots) to 4GB (4 slots) required only 0.05V increase, but I had to give 0.15~0.20V more juice for going from 2GB (2 slots) to 6GB (4 slots). Both Firestix and these Infineon sticks would do 4-3-3-9-2T with less then 2.0vDIMM when configured with only 2 sticks. 2GB -> 6GB seems to be a lot more demanding than 2GB -> 4GB.

I've ordered 2 more of these sticks so as soon as they arrive, I'll report back.

 

[lopri]

Part 1

Learn something new everyday. I never thought I'd be so stupid.

As previously mentioned, I received the last stick for my 8GB project and went on to testing. I at the same time decided to clean up some dust off the board as well as re-seating the HSF because the board has been sitting outside quite some time. (As a matter of fact, since I got this board - 'A1' revision for quad-core fix - this board has been outdoor.)

So what am I talking about? After lifting up the HSF, I found out the thermal paste (AS Ceramique) wasn't spread evenly around the center of the IHS. Cleaned up the mess, and re-applied the Ceramique, very carefully this time. The system boot successfully to Vista 64-bit, and guess what, the once-thought-to-be-lacking core isn't really lacking! It's more or less the same as the other 3! The overall temperature went down as well. Lesson learned: (im)Properly installed HSF can make up to 5C of a difference. Blame yourself first before blame hardware. Never assume. Don't skip the basics

My CPU now idles below 40C and loads below 60C. (again, do note that my system isn't inside a case yet) Also I was able to set the vCore a notch lower (0.01V) for the same frequency.

---------------------------------------------------------

Part 2

The replacement memory showed the exactly same performance as the other three, so I am very happy. I was stupidly up'ing vDIMMs before having realized one of the sticks was bad. Now, with all 8GB installed all I need for 800MHz/4-3-3-9-2T is 1.95V. (It might even go lower. Still testing) So I was wrong with my initial assessment that going to 8GB is much more demanding voltage-wise.

I haven't really fine-tuned the vCore yet (just giving a ball-park figure for now), but with the re-seated HSF, I tried giving a notch less vCore. And so far so good.

The only coincidence from my initial (terribly misleading) finding is the NB voltage. But it was expected since memory controller resides in the NB. 1.45V isn't totally stable, 1.40V would cause trouble for booting. @1.50V, the system runs stress testing fine. (There is a little caveat but I need more testing to make sure)

Talking about memory controller, I am more than impressed by NV's engineering on 680i SPP. This isn't about performance, but about its capability. Up until today (and to some extent still) I was kind of skeptical of this chipset being able to handle 4 x 2GB DIMMs. But the board handles 8GB, yes 8GB of memory, just fine. I am pleasantly surprised by this. Kudos to NV engineers - they earned my respect in this regard. I didn't really try to squeeze more performance via memory tweaking with this whole 8GB affair, and I don't even think I'll bother, ever. I am just happy that I now can have all my daily apps/data pre-fetched, readily available for use with little to no disk access. I remember the weird (nice) feeling that launching Oblivion didn't trigger HDD access with 4GB of RAM a couple months ago.

I've started running Quad-Prime95 a little while ago before I started typing this post, so the total run-time is rather short. I will do a longer run in a few days and report back.

Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 1
Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 2
Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 3

 

[imported_Dekard]

superfetch would be the main reason for me to move away from the 2g in my current system. And those DD2 2 prices are insane. Love it!

 

[lopri]

Got the other 2 sticks but I'm having a hard time stabilizing all 4 sticks together for 8 GB. I'm trying to track it down whether new sticks aren't up to the task or the board isn't.

 

[n7]

Wow :Q

Very nice prices on that RAM, & nice results

8 GB :Q

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: lopri
1. 1T is impossible with Quad-core + quad-memory (4x4? )

Not trying to be disagreeable with you Lopri, just wanted to add a potential counter-point datum from experience...am running QX6700 on a Striker (old 403 bios) with 4x1GB loaded. They do run at 1T, at least up to DDR2-667 clockings.

Maybe your statement was with respect to maximizing some metric of performance?

At any rate I have great respect for your postings and sharing of your experiences, please continue to help us newbies out by sharing even thru the debug periods. It is nice to see we are not the only ones struggling to get i680 boards and 4-loaded DIMM slots functioning

 

[aka1nas]

There is also an Outpost deal for 2GB Patriot DDR2-800 5-5-5 sticks for $100 each in the hot deals forum.

 

[lopri]

Aka1nas: Could you provide the link to the thread? I can't seem to find it. (I've got a bad vision )

Idon'tcare: It's my mistake to word my experience wrongly. You're right in that it may be possible to run 1T with quad-core CPU and quad memory sticks. It's just my CPU/board/memory that wouldn't do it. (although I didn't really try under 800MHz) I shouldn't have generalize. Thanks for the information. I will try again once I get the other stick back.

Talking about the other stick, I determined that one of the 4 sticks were bad and that was the cause of instability with 8GB. Ran memtest with the sticks, one by one, and one of the sticks gave me bunch of errors at 667MHz @1.90V. (The other 3 are fine) Requested an RMA from MWave and waiting for the replacement to arrive. (one excuse for the lack of update)

I'm currently running 6GB (3 x 2GB), of course single-channel since I have one slot empty. I think the most hypothesis I conceived in the first post will have to change. After taking out the bad stick, I'm stable with much less vDIMM. (I originally thought populating all 4 slots with 2GB DIMMs would require big jump in vDIMM supply)

On a different side: I've been searching for a easier way to run stress tests on quad-core and ran into the beta version of Quad-Prime95. It looks like this.

http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=quadprime95cs9.png

I didn't save (and can't remember) the original link that I found this, but from the readme file, it's somewhere @www.octeam.fr. I've uploaded a mirror so others can grab it if needs be.

http://rapidshare.com/files/31700257/QuadPrime95Beta.rar.html

 

[AkumaX]

damn, somebody stop me from buying those sticks! jeez, ddr2-800 @ cas4 @ that price!!!

 

[lopri]

I found the Fry's deal for Patriot 2GB. It's $20 more than the generic Infineon stick, but I suspect that it's the same thing inside. But if you value warranty (I don't know about Patriot's warranty policy but I'm sure there is something - the sticks that I've got don't have any warranty other than 30-day from MWave), $20 extra is certainly worth it, IMO. Indeed, had I known this deal (or if this deal had existed when I purchased my 2GB sticks), I might have went with Patriot despite the extra $20 per stick.

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/5224337

 

[Idontcare]

Dam Lopri, awesome find. At those prices the memory folks are going to have to start shipping 4GB sticks just to get the ASP's back up for leading edge DIMMs.

 

[lopri]

Haha OMG here is another.

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/5223667

 

[gramboh]

Dang, I feel bad only having 2GB in my new (well end of March) build. But then again I'm only running XP32.

I feel bad moreso because DD2 prices have fallen a bunch since I bought em. Oh well. I'll move to 4 or 8GB when I upgrade to Vista64 in a few yeras after drivers/gaming take advantage.

 

[Uppsala9496]

Originally posted by: gramboh
Dang, I feel bad only having 2GB in my new (well end of March) build. But then again I'm only running XP32.

I feel bad moreso because DD2 prices have fallen a bunch since I bought em. Oh well. I'll move to 4 or 8GB when I upgrade to Vista64 in a few yeras after drivers/gaming take advantage.

I am in the same boat. I bought 2 1gb sticks in mid-March for $120. At the time it was a steal.

 

[alaricljs]

Lopri, seeing as how you have a pile of RAM I have a question for you. In the manual of a motherboard I've been looking at there's mention of issues with 4GB RAM in that a pretty big chunk of it disappears "due to memory allocation to system devices". According to the manual this can drop as much as 1.2GB off the total!!

Are you familiar with this and have you seen it? Does this somehow not happen when you have more than 4GB? (the manual states only "4GB" and not >=4GB) Would you know if this happens when running a 64bit OS or Linux (32 or 64) ?


Thanks

 

[n7]

That should only happen in a 32-bit OS, namely a Windows-based 32-bit OS.

With XP64/Vista 64, you should be getting the full 4 GB.

 

[lopri]

n7 is correct. It's the limit of 32-bit OS which only can addresses up to 4GB of memory. The thing is, the 4GB includes every bit of memory from devices that the OS recognizes via drivers. Say, an easy example would be your video card. If your video card has 256MB of RAM, that counts toward the 4GB limit. In reality, virtually every piece of hardware these days have some sort of built-in memory (even a regular hard disk has 8MB/16MB of cache, of which counts towards the 4GB limit naturally) and they add up quickly. For instance, on Windows XP (32-bit):

Note the pink boxes

As you can see, the OS only sees 2.75GB of available system RAM despite that there are 4GB of physical RAM is installed.

There is a work-around called PAE (Physical Address Extention) but on a normal desktop it'll probably cause a driver nightmare, so it's not recommended at all. It's for, say, headless servers with minimal devices. On top of that, on 32-bit OS each application can only address up to 2GB of RAM. This applies to some of the 64-bit OS also. Check the MS' explanation on this matter.

Memory Limits for Windows
About Memory Management

It was the biggest dilemma I faced when I moved on to Vista. 64-bit support of hardware drivers wasn't to my satisfaction, but 2GB (if switching to 32-bit) just didn't seem enough for Vista.

Originally posted by: alaricljs
Lopri, seeing as how you have a pile of RAM

Hehe.. Well I'm down to 6 sticks now. At one point I had 10 (1GB) sticks. Glad that I got rid of most of them while the prices were stable.

 

[alaricljs]

That's good to know. I'm looking at upgrading my home server and want to have some extra RAM to run a few VMware instances. It would have sucked to see it eaten needlessly. Now to decide between filling the 4 slots with 1GB sticks, or buying 2 2GB sticks... *sigh*

 

[lopri]

NewEgg finally started dropping prices on 4GB kits.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820231122

alaricljs: What is the OS of your home server? If you don't mind.

 

[alaricljs]

Debian sid, updated within the last couple weeks. And if I hadn't just rebuilt OpenWRT on my WRT54GS I'd still have ssh punched through so I could get to it... errrrg. Currently running 32bit on a 1ghz Athlon with 512MB ram, 1.5TB... More than enough for the file server tasks and audio transcoding that I run on it occasionally. I want to have a couple VMware instances for testing new software installs and possibly some video encoding. It's about time I pulled my home videos of the 15 MiniDV tapes I've filled up and actually do something with it.

 

[lopri]

Ah.. I see. (Well.. not really. I'm not too familiar with Linux - The most I've done is booting Ubuntu off CD and toying with it for a bit) But I know a little bit about Virtualization. Needs a strong CPU (dual/multi-core is definitely a plus), lots of RAM. HDD performance is surprisingly important because you'll have VHDs with their own file systems (that get fragmented) inside the hosting OS. Maintaining clean VHD as well as hosting OS's HDD seems to affect the usability a lot. (i.e. less stuttering)

Back to the topic: My replacement stick arrived and I'm running stress test right now. I'm hoping I can run at least a couple hours before I gotta get going (out).

 

[lopri]

Part 1

Learn something new everyday. I never thought I'd be so stupid.

As previously mentioned, I received the last stick for my 8GB project and went on to testing. I at the same time decided to clean up some dust off the board as well as re-seating the HSF because the board has been sitting outside quite some time. (As a matter of fact, since I got this board - 'A1' revision for quad-core fix - this board has been outdoor.)

So what am I talking about? After lifting up the HSF, I found out the thermal paste (AS Ceramique) wasn't spread evenly around the center of the IHS. Cleaned up the mess, and re-applied the Ceramique, very carefully this time. The system boot successfully to Vista 64-bit, and guess what, the once-thought-to-be-lacking core isn't really lacking! It's more or less the same as the other 3! The overall temperature went down as well. Lesson learned: (im)Properly installed HSF can make up to 5C of a difference. Blame yourself first before blame hardware. Never assume. Don't skip the basics

My CPU now idles below 40C and loads below 60C. (again, do note that my system isn't inside a case yet) Also I was able to set the vCore a notch lower (0.01V) for the same frequency.

---------------------------------------------------------

Part 2

The replacement memory showed the exactly same performance as the other three, so I am very happy. I was stupidly up'ing vDIMMs before having realized one of the sticks was bad. Now, with all 8GB installed all I need for 800MHz/4-3-3-9-2T is 1.95V. (It might even go lower. Still testing) So I was wrong with my initial assessment that going to 8GB is much more demanding voltage-wise.

I haven't really fine-tuned the vCore yet (just giving a ball-park figure for now), but with the re-seated HSF, I tried giving a notch less vCore. And so far so good.

The only coincidence from my initial (terribly misleading) finding is the NB voltage. But it was expected since memory controller resides in the NB. 1.45V isn't totally stable, 1.40V would cause trouble for booting. @1.50V, the system runs stress testing fine. (There is a little caveat but I need more testing to make sure)

Talking about memory controller, I am more than impressed by NV's engineering on 680i SPP. This isn't about performance, but about its capability. Up until today (and to some extent still) I was kind of skeptical of this chipset being able to handle 4 x 2GB DIMMs. But the board handles 8GB, yes 8GB of memory, just fine. I am pleasantly surprised by this. Kudos to NV engineers - they earned my respect in this regard. I didn't really try to squeeze more performance via memory tweaking with this whole 8GB affair, and I don't even think I'll bother, ever. I am just happy that I now can have all my daily apps/data pre-fetched, readily available for use with little to no disk access. I remember the weird (nice) feeling that launching Oblivion didn't trigger HDD access with 4GB of RAM a couple months ago.

I've started running Quad-Prime95 a little while ago before I started typing this post, so the total run-time is rather short. I will do a longer run in a few days and report back.

Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 1
Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 2
Quad-Prime95 w/ 8GB of RAM 3

 

[Tegeril]

I've been having ridiculous problems with very high speed memory occupying all four banks in my P5W. As soon as I can get my hands on a P35 I'm sticking my new 4x2GB Patriot PC2-6400 in and going to enjoy this just as you.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Wrong tread

 

[Atheus]

What kind of software are you running that uses 8GB of memory? Must be something pretty damn intensive - I can't imagine breaking through 4GB (or even 2GB) in any normal workstation tasks, except maybe rendering, but it would have to be a lot of huge files and then I'd probably be looking at a cluster...