What happened to Triple Channel RAM?

[MJD]

So I kind of have been waiting for the next line of Intel processors to come out before I upgrade, but as I see with Ivy Bridge, they still do not support triple channel RAM like the LGA 1366 processors. Why is Intel staying away from triple channel RAM? Is RAM bandwidth and speed just not all that important anymore?? Thanks for your input!

[abysal]

Well imo it was a gimmick. It is now replaced with quad channel in socket 2011, again also a gimmick, imo. Socket 2011 boards have their advantages, but quad channel memory architecture is not one of them. Current z68 and z77 socket 1155 based dual channel setups out perform triple or quad channel.

In theory triple channel and quad channel support more memory, that's probably the biggest benefit of those techs. Also when triple channel came out with socket 1366, it may have been faster than the sister socket 1156 dual channel setup at that time.

[Boz]

Well imo it was a gimmick. It is now replaced with quad channel in socket 2011, again also a gimmick, imo. Socket 2011 boards have their advantages, but quad channel memory architecture is not one of them. Current z68 and z77 socket 1155 based dual channel setups out perform triple or quad channel.

In theory triple channel and quad channel support more memory, that's probably the biggest benefit of those techs. Also when triple channel came out with socket 1366, it may have been faster than the sister socket 1156 dual channel setup at that time.

Triple or Quad channel memory should outperform dual channel just based on bandwidth. The problem with these triple channel modules is that they suffer from high latency and why some dual channel ram outperformed them.

[Amarok]

The gains are too tiny to be worth it.

[torrentthief]

the performance increase from dual to triple to quad channel is very small yet the financial cost is large. Also extra ram slots take up valuable motherboard space.

[abysal]

Triple or Quad channel memory should outperform dual channel just based on bandwidth. The problem with these triple channel modules is that they suffer from high latency and why some dual channel ram outperformed them.

Only in synthetic tests such as Sandra, that measure bandwidth, does quad channel look favorable. In real world, there are heavy memory based server work loads that benefit. I believe socket 1366 and 2011 were developed in part for Xeon server CPUs.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

It isn't gone from what I can see. It has always been an enthusiast level feature (from what little I can remember on it) and as such was on the X58/1366 line. The replacement X79/2011 has upped it to quad channel so it has been given a boost.

For me, I prefer triple or quad channel boards due to the raw amount of RAM you can throw into them. My X58 has 24GB and I'm considering pulling up to an X79 so I can take advantage of the falling prices on 8GB DDR3 DIMMs...

I doubt there is a major benefit in real world usage bandwidth wise, but if you need the extra RAM they haven't killed your options.

[Argote]

Real world benefit is negligible in most cases.