Sorry your browser is not supported!

I made my computer a long time ago, it has an Intel Q6600 processor and 4 sticks of 2GB DDR2 Ram. I understood that DDR2 meant it accesses the memory in pairs, e.g. slot 1 and slot 3, slot 2 and slot 4. And that is "good".

I'm looking to upgrade, thinking it would be that simple but with DDR3 - I would just buy 3 sticks to get the most out of it. HOWEVER I have been taken right out of my comfort zone with this:

Intel I5 processors can use DDR3 ram yet all the socket 1155 motherboards have 4 ram slots!? - In addition after a bit of googling I find that I5 isn't triple channel?

What is the point of it being able to use DDR3 if it cant make use of 3 chanels?

Can someone please help me out. Is DDR3 generally better due to faster speeds - and thats why I5 uses it? Will my old DDR2 sticks work with it? Are I3 and I7 triple channel? In addition should I buy 4 sticks of DDR3 to put in all slots of the motherboard or just 3? Cheers.

DDR3 just means it's a speed upgrade over the DDR2 RAM sticks. The ability to be triple-channeled would have to come from the motherboard and/or CPU. i3/i5 motherboards support dual-channels, I don't know about i7 because I haven't looked into it that much. You can't use DDR2 with the i5, they're incompatible. If you can fill all your RAM slots, go for it. You can honestly never have enough RAM(though you should be using a 64-bit version of your OS if you have more than 4 GB of RAM).

Supposedly you get better performance when installing DDR in pairs, but as Dar13 pointed out, DDR3 does not mean triple channel. It's only supported by a few i7's and Xeons, see here. Basically, your most common CPUs right now will likely not support triple channel, unless the motherboard has a chipset that can add support to that (I don't know for sure).

Also, if you buy any package of ram that says triple channel ram kit, the only thing different about it over other sticks is the fact you're getting 3 in a single package. It's the same ram.


DDR3 is better than DDR2; it's faster and it's the current standard and will likely be cheaper. The i-core series of CPUs use DDR3 simply because it's newer and better. Why make a new chip use old technology?

Buy 4 sticks if you need it, but if you're happy with 8GB then just get 2x4GB sticks. I have 16GB total myself.