Dual, Triple, Quad and Hexa Channel Questions

[Merovius]

In a triple channel board, quad channel will default to dual channel and hexa channel will default to triple channel right?

 

[tecmo34]

There is only dual-channel or triple-channel memory. When you are running four slots, each pair is running in dual-channel. When you are running six slots, each pair of three are running in triple-channel.

Make sense??

 

[Merovius]

Why do they call these Hexa channel kits?here There are also quite a few quad channel kits as Im sure you are aware.

Do you mean that current mobos only support dual and triple?

 

[tecmo34]

Yes, current motherboards don't support Hexa or Quad Channel. It is basically two sets of triple or dual channel memory. Here is a posting from the Nvidia forum talking more about this just being a marketing tool... http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t145850.html

The one good thing about the units, is they will all work together at specified specs.. This can't be said with comparing two sets of either dual or triple channel memory.

 

[jaquith]

^ Huh? Confusion!

Tri/Hexa-Channel is not to be confused with DDR2/DDR3 RAM. Example: X58/1366 MOBOs have 6 Slots {Hexa ~ Tri} Channel; sets of "3 or 6". Where as P55/1156 have 4 x DIMM slots {Dual ~ Quad} Channel; sets of "2 or 4". Both use DDR3 Memory.

{Hexa ~ Tri} Kits are all matched & bin together, and it is the prefered way to purchase them. A recent example of mixing (2) different Tri-Channel Kits = Disaster -> {see - "JEEEZZ!!"} http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/page-280059_30_50.html

Memory Types:
DDR2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR2_SDRAM
DDR3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR3_SDRAM