HANDS ON GUIDE

Integrated Memory Controller

Nehalem features triple channel DDR3 support

It isn’t a great surprise that Nehalem requires DDR3 memory. Intel is keen to see DDR3 become the new memory standard, and has already begun supporting it with their recent chipsets. However, the memory controller in a Nehalem chip runs at either 800MHz or 1,066MHz – the slowest of the possible DDR3 frequencies.

Don't worry, you’ll still be able to use faster memory with Nehalem, as you can overclock the memory controller to match faster RAM, but that still seems slower than we were expecting.

The memory controller of Nehalem has three channels, meaning that you’ll need three sticks of DDR3 for optimal memory performance. Intel showed us a triple-stick kit from Qimonda and said that other such kits will become increasingly common as Nehalem edges closer to launch. Unless DDR3 memory dramatically falls in price, it seems Nehalem systems won’t be cheap for early adopters.

The major advantage to having three memory channels is enormous memory bandwidth. Intel also pointed out that three 1GB DDR3 memory sticks are a perfect amount of RAM for 32-bit operating systems, which are limited to a maximum of 4GB of address space.

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