Intels LGA 2011 Socket & Chipset Pictures Leaked

[Tharic-Nar]

Hot on the heels of Intel's P67 chipset comes some photos of the replacement for the X58 platform. What has been found on an overseas website is a picture of the LGA2011 socket itself and the bare southbridge chip on an unnamed X68 MSI motherboard.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[Doomsday]

damn! Another big one!

 

[Rob Williams]

I guess I never thought about the quad-channel boards having just four DIMM slots. To fit in a regular ATX form-factor, eight DIMMs is out of the question, so hmph. I would expect some eATX boards to fit eight in, but it'd be tough.

As Ryan states, higher-density modules are continuing to plummet in price, but I dunno if I'm that amped up to using just 4GB modules due to their slower speeds. Hopefully when X68 hits the scene, timings and pricing will be modest, because as it is, 4GB modules demand a much higher premium over 2GB ones.

 

[Kougar]

I had to build a few Sandy Bridge systems for people already, and they were wanting 8GB configs. So I went to Newegg and sorted by 8GB 1600MHz kits... the cheapest 8GB memory kit is 2 x 4GB. There were a dozen other 2 x 4GB modules kits within $10 of those... so I think any price premiums that used to exist have gone by the wayside thanks to all the new Sandy Bridge memory models that launched.

Certainly within 3 quarters prices are going to drop even lower, so 4 x 4GB should be pretty cheap for a quad channel setup. 16GB may be a freaking ton of RAM, but I guess if someone is going to buy an 8-core 16-thread CPU they will have use for it...

 

[Rob Williams]

When I made that last post, I was oblivious to the fact that we've been receiving some 2x4GB kits in recent months for testing. So far, all of them are DDR3-1600 9-9-9 1.50v~1.65v, which is fine, but I'd still love to see at least CAS8 on modules of those frequencies. Perhaps I'll have to toss one of these kits in and see how hard they are to tighten timings on.

I have to say, though, I have 12GB of RAM in this rig and I find it to be perfect. It IS overkill most of the time, but I do on occasion use it all. I couldn't imagine being able to push 16GB, or even more. Imagine 24GB on an X58 rig... insane.

 

[Optix]

The reason why I went with the G.Skill ECO kit is that they are 1600mhz at 7-8-7 using only 1.35v so I knew they had plenty of overclocking headroom (2000mhz at 9-9-9 using 1.6v W00T!). So far my experience has been that the higher the density, the lower the overclocking potential. If this holds true for the 4GB sticks, timings will end up being more and more important.

 

[Rob Williams]

So far my experience has been that the higher the density, the lower the overclocking potential. If this holds true for the 4GB sticks, timings will end up being more and more important.

That can be true, and it's always a good bet to purchase RAM with great timings and a modest latency because it just means that the potential for overclocking might be huge.

4GB modules are a different beast though, and I'm not sure we can take our knowledge of overclocking 2GB modules over to them. As the density increases, so does the difficulty in overclocking - at least, that's what history has taught me. If we're seeing DDR3-1600 9-9-9, I'm not super-confident that overclocking them will be that simple on modest voltage.

I'll put the kits I have through some OCing tests soon.

What's a good RAM testing program nowadays? Still LinX?

 

[Optix]

I -think- OCCT has a memory test but you could always go for good ol' MemTest86+.

 

[Kougar]

The reason why I went with the G.Skill ECO kit is that they are 1600mhz at 7-8-7 using only 1.35v so I knew they had plenty of overclocking headroom (2000mhz at 9-9-9 using 1.6v W00T!). So far my experience has been that the higher the density, the lower the overclocking potential. If this holds true for the 4GB sticks, timings will end up being more and more important.

That's a great point about what I was going to say... That's also a pretty decent overclock there, I wouldn't have expected a low voltage kit to handle high frequencies like that!

What I wanted to add is that DDR3 1.65v was considered "stock" for voltages, although plenty of Lynnfield kits went higher. Now all of these new 4GB module kits are advertising 1.5v, so I'm sure some of them have headroom if run at 1.65v whether to tighten the timings or raise the frequency.

As far as memory testing goes, Memtest86+ first, then LinX to heat up the RAM and fill it to capacity. It's unfortunate Prime95's sensitivity to data errors couldn't be combined with LinX's ability to max out the memory capacity... I still use all three for RAM checking & testing just to be absolutely sure.