Ivybridge-E Memory Guide

Recently, Intel launched their new Ivybridge-E platform to update their Sandybridge-E chips which were launched about two years ago. These new Ivybridge-E chips share a lot in common with their precursors, including models with 6-cores, similar speeds, and virtually identical memory compatibility. Most testing coming from third party review sites has shown about a 5% increase in performance over the Sandybridge-E variants, while being more energy efficient. Ivy-E chips share the same compatibility with X79 motherboards, and Intel’s LGA 2011 sockets, which have been around since the original Sandy-E chips came out, about two years ago.

Above: Intel’s latest Ivybridge-E lineup of CPUs, compared with the top of the line Haswell i7-4770K

I think it is safe to say that getting current "Sandy-E" users to upgrade to "Ivy-E" will be a hard sell due to the minimal improvements over "Sandy-E," but new builders may be wondering if they should go for "Ivy-E" or the latest generation "Haswell" chips. The most prominent benefits that "Ivy-E" has over the 4^th generation Intel “Haswell” chips are the amount of cores available on the CPU and the memory support. The Ivy-E 4960X and 4930K both have 6 cores, while all "Haswell" chips are limited to 4 cores. As for the memory support, "Ivy-E" gets you quad channel memory support, with many x79 motherboards coming with 8 DIMM slots, for up to 64GB of total memory. The integrated memory controller in "Ivy-E" will support 1866MHz as a native spec, while "Haswell" and "Sandy-E" are officially rated for 1600MHz max. So if you think you can put to use the extra memory slots and bandwidth, along with the extra two CPU cores, then "Ivy-E" is the ideal option.

If you are building an "Ivy-E" based system then you will want to take advantage of its support for quad channel memory; below you will find links to the current quad channel kits that are available from Corsair.

Dominator

Vengeance Pro

Vengeance