Introduction

For the most part, more is better. But the thing about this equation is while more is going to be faster, does the extra speed warrant the price increase that is going to come with the upgrade? - The release of the X58 chipset saw two new standards for memory capacity; because of the extra module included we now see memory kits in 3GB and 6GB.

3GB versus 6GB is a bit of a weird one. With the older dual channel chipsets we saw memory come in 2GB and 4GB form and with Vista the extra 2GB of memory was extremely helpful. But moving past that didn't really show us a whole lot more improvement.

If you didn't have an x64 bit version of Vista, though, you were only using around 3GB of your 4GB memory kit. But even this yielded some pretty impressive performance increases over the 2GB kit, which makes us wonder; with 3GB kits being a standard for X58 systems, is that more than enough memory to keep one satisfied?

Today we intend to find out. On the next page we will have a closer look at the test system we're using today and how exactly we're going to see what the extra memory does for us. DDR3 Tri-Channel kits aren't cheap and if we have the chance to save you some money by getting less RAM, you might be able to get yourself a better graphics card that could yield a more noticeable performance gain.