3200MHz Dual Channel VS 2933MHz Quad Channel

[Oceanwave]

Any idea which set would win most of the time without any overclocking/BIOS adjustments?

[WereCat]

you obviously get more bandwidth with Quad channel so that would easily win... assuming you are using platform that actually supports quad channel

[Oceanwave]

This is for an Alienware Area-51 R7 Intel X299. Their order configs suggest supporting 2933MHz in Quad Channel and 3200MHz in Dual Channel. Is it possible their cheap motherboard is limiting Quad Channel to 2933MHz?

[Turtle Rig]

8 minutes ago, Oceanwave said:

This is for an Alienware Area-51 R7 Intel X299. Their order configs suggest supporting 2933MHz in Quad Channel and 3200MHz in Dual Channel. Is it possible their cheap motherboard is limiting Quad Channel to 2933MHz?

Nah I doubt it big time.

[Oceanwave]

12 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

Nah I doubt it big time.

Must be that they're offering cheaper 3200MHz RAM then. Thanks guys!

[Turtle Rig]

Think of it as a freeway.  Dual Channel means theres 2 lanes that information can pass through.  Or cars pass through....  If you have quad channel now you have 4 lanes on the freeway and bunch of cars can pass through and more data passes through and what not.

[Oceanwave]

I wonder why they offer: "64GB (4 Sticks) Dual Channel at 3200MHz". What gives? lol

[airdeano]

x299 supported two systems:

kabylake x: dual channel memory use (4-DIMM slots)

skylake x: quad channel memory use (8-DIMM slots)

 

[Turtle Rig]

2 hours ago, Oceanwave said:

I wonder why they offer: "64GB (4 Sticks) Dual Channel at 3200MHz". What gives? lol

I guess they want you to have more slots open so you come back to them for 128GB RAM ,,,,,,,,,, oh dear.......

[nick name]

The more RAM there is the more stress on the IMC.  

[Oceanwave]

19 hours ago, airdeano said:

x299 supported two systems:

kabylake x: dual channel memory use (4-DIMM slots)

skylake x: quad channel memory use (8-DIMM slots)

 

 

18 hours ago, Turtle Rig said:

I guess they want you to have more slots open so you come back to them for 128GB RAM ,,,,,,,,,, oh dear.......

But this Skylake X system only has 4 DIMM slots total. Can they make their motherboard run Quad Channel with only 4 DIMM slots? Dellianware doesn't list detailed motherboard specs for this high end system. What a joke.

[Turtle Rig]

1 minute ago, Oceanwave said:

 

But this Skylake X system only has 4 DIMM slots total. Can they make their motherboard run Quad Channel with only 4 DIMM slots? Dellianware doesn't list detailed motherboard specs for this high end system. What a joke.

NOPE!

[Oceanwave]

12 minutes ago, Turtle Rig said:

NOPE!

But why are they advertising this:

Quote

"With 64GB of memory in quad-channel mode and 4 DIMM slots to populate your memory"

If it sheds any light on the matter, I have an Area 51 Threadripper atm, with only 4 DIMM slots and it shows running in Quad Channel.

 

[Turtle Rig]

16 minutes ago, Oceanwave said:

But why are they advertising this:

If it sheds any light on the matter, I have an Area 51 Threadripper atm, with only 4 DIMM slots and it shows running in Quad Channel.

 

That's a trip.  I thought quad was 4 slots on each side of cpu, hmmmmmm

[porina]

You only need one slot per channel minimum. The high end OC boards for dual channel systems typically only have 2 ram slots for potentially better OC. The other reasons for cutting down is to either save space or cost.

[Oceanwave]

Is it possible their 3200MHz Dual Channel option, is 2 identical Dual Channel kits running together in Quad Channel?

[badreg]

I just looked at the website, and it's most likely a typo. All other <64GB options are dual channel, while the other two 64GB options are quad channel. 32GB sticks don't really exist yet, so it highly likely that these are four sticks. AFAIK, there is no way to run four sticks in dual channel mode on a 4 DIMM X299 board. You can if it's a 8 DIMM board but it would be trivial to move the sticks to the correct slots to enable quad channel.

 

Quad channel will reduce the maximum speed and timings that you can run and increase latency compared to dual channel, but a different rated kit of memory won't be the difference between you being able to run quad channel or not. If it is not a typo, it may be Dell's strange way of saying that you may have to reduce the memory clocks to 2933Mhz in order to be stable in quad channel.