There is a very good article about DDR3-1600 Memory Configuration for Poweredge 12th Generation Servers, it’s good to see finally the 1U R620 having 24 Dimms as their big brother 2U R720. Also, I found a link regarding the latest LRDIMM, it’s very interesting as well.

On the eve of Intel’s release of Sandy Bridge-EP, the next generation of Xeon processors for servers, the memory industry has geared up for another uptick in memory speed.  Following Moore’s law– speed and performance are increasing while costs for memory are at historic lows.   Configuring servers for maximum power and performance has never been more affordable.

By selecting the latest DDR3-1600 (PC3-12800) speed DIMMs that deliver a data rate of 12.8 GB/s, you will realize about 20% more throughput than existing DDR3-1333 (PC3-10600) speed memory which delivers a data rate of 10.66 GB/s.   PC3-10600 RDIMMs, the most commonly used RDIMMs in today’s Xeon 5600 CPUs based servers, will give way to the faster PC3-12800 speed memory.

Just an FYI for the novice reader—the terms “DDR3-1333” and “DDR3-1600” are DRAM speeds, and “PC3-10600” and “PC3-12800” are MODULE (DIMM) speeds, as defined by JEDEC.  However many times, the DRAM speed nomenclature is used universally as both DRAM and DIMM speed indications.

AMD also has adopted the faster DDR3-1600 speed memory for servers with the introduction of Opteron 6200 “Interlagos” CPUs.   Servers and workstations will see significant performance improvements over prior generation Opteron 6100, which also featured DDR3-1333 as the top memory speed.

This discussion is all about speed and performance–since these DDR3-1600 applications will be offered at standard DDR3 1.5V power only.

Low voltage 1.35V (PC3L), and future 1.25V lower voltage dimms, will not be enabled at DDR3-1600 speed in this new generation of servers.

They will however continue to support DDR3L-1333 (PC3L-10600R) memory speeds at low voltage (1.35V), for those wishing to extract maximum power savings from their server infrastructure in lieu of the highest possible performance.   The trade-off decisions continue between maximum power savings vs. maximum compute performance.   The “tug-of-war” between “Going Green” vs. “My Servers are my Strategic Weapons” groups continues, with the power users configuring for maximum speed and competitive advantage by delivering the fastest response times.

Additionally, a new 32GB DDR3-1333 (PC3L-10600) LRDIMM (Load Reduced DIMM) is available now which is required for these servers to achieve a maximum memory capacity of 768GB.