Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by flemhans 680 days ago
I'm buying a server with 12 slots, should I go for 4x128 gb instead of 8x64 then?
3 comments

No, you want to utilize the extra memory bandwidth of the EPYC server CPUs. Use all 12 channels!

The desktop CPUs only have two memory channels so you don't get a performance benefit by using four memory modules.

Thanks, I'll try and populate it fully!
You want to ideally have exactly one DIMM per channel. How many dimms this means depends on configuration, but modern EPYC platforms are 12-channel, so there is likely one slot per channel on your board.
You can run two DIMMs per channel without much downside. There's a dual-socketed server mobo out there that has 48 DIMM slots, making it possible to run 24TB of RAM in a 2U rack-mount
On current AMD processors, there is absolutely downside to running two DIMMs per channel. That's the discussion we're having here.
Is the server using udimms or rdimms? With rdimms the additional memory controller load from more dimms isn't nearly as much as with udimms