G.Skill Announces 16GB Unbuffered Modules: 128GB Kit at DDR4-2800
by Ian Cutress on April 24, 2015 2:57 PM EST
One of the more important announcements this year in the world of DRAM has been the march towards 16GB un-buffered modules. We saw last year Intelligent Memory launch some for DDR3, but due to other issues they only worked out-of-the-box on AMD and Atom platforms and were not widely available. At CES we saw Corsair place an interesting image on one of their displays, indicating that DDR4 modules at 16GB a piece were coming. Today, G.Skill formalises this with the announcement of a 128GB memory kit for X99.
G.Skill has worked with Samsung in order to produce modules rated for DDR4-2800 at 16-16-16. These 8Gb ICs are produced at 20nm, and while the average user has little need for 128GB, X99 is aimed more at the prosumer market which can have exorbitant memory requirements – previously the only way to hit 128GB on a single socket was with RDIMMs and Xeon processors which have a substantial cost.
At this point in time, G.Skill is showing that DDR4-2800 with 128GB works with the ASUS X99 Rampage V Extreme, although the XMP profile should allow use on other motherboards. Personally I would suggest that X99 users ensure they have the latest BIOS update before installing these modules, should they have any additional sub-timing parameters needed. I would also expect that as other manufacturers get these modules in to test, validation lists and QVL will be updated.
As this is an announcement rather than a launch, G.Skill hasn’t released pricing or a date yet. Based on previous experience this usually means we will have to wait between 2-6 weeks before they go on sale. It is worth noting that Computex is in early June, and thus a launch around that time might be expected. A current 8x8GB DDR4-2800 kit costs $790, so I wouldn't be surprised if this kit easily doubles that. We should start seeing slower kits at DDR4-2133 for less over the summer, if this announcement is anything to go by.
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smilingcrow - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
And they are the 1%.Laststop311 - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Actually on this very website they show that ddr3 2400 Cas 10 is actually the fastest DDR3 speed. The increased Cas of faster DDR3 speeds actually makes it perform slightly lower. So people buying anything over DDR3 2400 Cas 10 are completely wasting money.Sn3akr - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
You can't compare DDR3-3000 MHz to DDR4-3000 MHz, their 2 different types of ram and the DDR4 would be running at higher latencies. Also having extreme high RAM-frequencies on DDR3 is mostly good for setting benchmark records or in server environments, but as a normal user, you would hardly notice any difference. Only scenario that benefits from higher RAM-speeds is, if you use an AMD-APU and are not running a dedicated graphics-card, then the graphics will benefit from the higher RAM-speedschizow - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
Very true, they have dropped nearly in half since I built my X99 system in November. The biggest difference is that X99 is being sold in quad-channel kits for the most part vs. typical LGA1150 systems which are just dual-channel so you are basically dealing in 2x denominations. Also, the minimum DIMM size has gone from 2-8GB to 4-8GB and now 16GB. So it quickly gets into a powers of 2 situation for most people but the advantages are worth it imo.Samus - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
DDR4 adoption isn't as compelling as DDR3 was, and even DDR3 wasn't mainstream for a year. X58 owned the DDR3 market for all of 2008 and most of 2009.Cpt.Planet - Sunday, April 26, 2015 - link
How is DDR4 prices being inflated? It's the same thing that happened when DDR2->DDR3 transition. There are several reasons for DDR4 being expensive, it's not in mainstream systems so they don't make a ton, the other reason is recouping R&D costs. There is always a price premium and then eventually it gets to parity. There was limited supply at launch for fast parts but 2133MHz was available for months before launch.ytoledano - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Finally!I suspect that this has taken so long to arrive since now, in some cases, you don't need expensive server CPUs, mother boards and RAM. Not unlike the ISP that isn't selling you upload speeds that will enable you to open your own web server at home.
Ashinjuka - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Great! Now CHKDSK /r will run even faster!bznotins - Friday, April 24, 2015 - link
Oh, the RAMDrive possibilities...chizow - Saturday, April 25, 2015 - link
This is becoming harder to achieve as games get larger and larger. GTA5 for example weighs in at a whopping 65GB and now with graphics VRAM amounts increasing Windows wants 2x your VRAM amount as a swap buffer. With Titan X and 32GB RAM for example Windows makes 28GB available to the graphics card. No complaints really because games run silky smooth on my rig.