From what I've heard, socket 2011 CPUs support only 1 DIMM per channel (for signal integrity reasons, I presume)... I dunno, maybe this was based on old or bad information, it's quite a while since I heard this. Anyway, how often do you really upgrade your RAM these days, don't you kind of buy ENOUGH, and then use that memory until the system is retired? I know that's how it worked for me in my last 3 PCs.or do these boards only implement 2 channels (with 2 dimms each)?
RAM isn't so expensive these days (and I'm not rich). It's not like the early 90s, where a 30-pin stick of 256kB DRAM cost a hundred bucks...that's because you can afford it.
Xeon CPUs will probably see Intel's new fully buffered DIMMs implemented, letting you install ginormous amounts of memory (at least 2TB or somesuch with current memory density I believe); "only" 4 DIMMs for lesser servers, workstations, and power users should still be quite sufficient. After all, nothing forces you to populate all 4 right away; memory bandwidth is rarely a bottleneck on modern PC CPUs and probably won't be on the SNB-E either, with the gobs and gobs of cache it will have.it feels stupid, I thought socket 2011 and the fourth channel were made by Intel to increase memory capacity in server.
Good for AMD then!users that want huge memory on the cheap will have to buy a socket C32 motherboard, the CPU are slower but you may afford two C32 opteron for the price of one six core Intel CPU.
Looks just slightly larger than LGA1366 to me.
Though what I'm wondering, all boards only have 4 dimm slots? Since the chip is supposed to have 4 memory channels, does that mean you need to equip all memory slots (and can't upgrade then without removing old memory, not that I'd really expect much of a performance difference between 2 and 4 channels), or do these boards only implement 2 channels (with 2 dimms each)?
In any case, seems some step backwards since LGA1366 almost always had 6 memory slots, if you only have 4 you lose the advantage over LGA1155 if you just need all the memory you can get... Obviously, ideally you'd have 8 memory slots on a LGA2011 board I suppose.
Same here (my Nehalem is at 4GHz). I could, though, jump from 6 to 12GB RAM as intermediate upgrade option... and have some fun with RAMDrive.My Nehalem 2.66GHz chip is still rocking hard (running slightly overclocked at 3.4 with stock volts).
Yeah well, not that it matters much, as 3.4 is plenty horsepower as it is. I don't see what would be significantly better-running with the CPU spinning at 4GHz. Maybe if I still ran folding@home, but I don't anymore due to their clients being so poor. Or were, last winter anyway, not sure if anything has changed.
I do sometimes run seti and milkyway projects through Boinc during the colder months though, but again I think the speed increase would be relatively minor. I'm certainly not going to bump the volts to 1.312V that's for sure, that's like 10% increase over stock or something. That'd make a significant increase in heat output.
There are LGA2011 boards with 2 sockets per channel, for a total of 8 DIMM slots, so it IS possible after all. I kind of suspect they're extended format ATX though, but I might be wrong there, I haven't studied the pictures that intently since I'm going to skip upgrading my CPU this generation. Since consumer SNB-E lack PCIe 3.0 anyway it won't make a very tempting upgrade IMO; nothing I do is CPU limited anyhow. My Nehalem 2.66GHz chip is still rocking hard (running slightly overclocked at 3.4 with stock volts).