New News about slots? RAM: Is more really better?

Question

Hi,
Ok, two questions in one post but if I can save one tree,... it's worth it...
Has there be any new consensus regarding filling one's RAM slots versus leaving 2 empty?
I've done my own limited testing in PS4 and AE4 and it seems to make no difference at all. What apps benefit from leaving two slots empty, taking advantage of the hyper-threading, I believe?
And when is RAM too much RAM, as in not needed? Due to a recent bout of madness I went from 16gb to 32 in my Mac. The difference? Awfully subtle, if one at all. Even having the preference in AE4 of putting more memory to individual processors, being able to increase it, has had little noticeable effect in that app. Am I happy I have the RAM, yes. For what I paid for it, no. Does it really boost performance? Not as much as one might hope.
Caveat emptor?

Answer 1

I looked through more of my bookmarks for dual vs triple. Tests on other motherboards, different OS, are likely going to show different results, but....
The reply in this thread is of interest:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/245839-30-triple-channel-memory
*Everest Ultimate Conclusion* Everest shows virtually no difference in dual vs triple channel mode with clockspeeds being the deciding factor. you will also notice the latency scores show much lower results than Sandra was reporting,( with latency Lower is better) again due to the different way of rating the performance. We were surprised to see such little difference in Everest after the virtual shut out in Sandra.
This is exactly why we like to use more than one kind of test to evaluate products we test and also helps to illustrate that not all performance tweaks will render a positive result, depending on what you are doing sometimes it will render a similar result.
http://www.ninjalane.com/articles/general_information/dualvtriple
For us, the real issue was how much of the memory bandwidth bottleneck prior Mac Pro the move to DDR3 offer customers. Intel's own Core i7 X58 for PC builders comes with just 4 DDR3 DIMM slots, not 3, and not 6 as most (all) the other desktop boards come equipped with (does Intel know something?).
It is also interesting to see the enormous advances CPUs have made in the virtualization area:
•The latest Xeon 55xx of early 2009 is about 4.2 times faster than the best 3.7GHz dual-core Xeons of early 2006. Moving from the 3-4 year old dual-core servers towards the newest quad-core Opterons/Xeons will improve the total performance of your server by about 3 to 4 times. http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3567&p=12
Intel (and Apple) wanted to move beyond the cost, heat, latency of using Fully-Buffered ECC which can use 10-15W per DIMM - Apple needed theirs to come with very large heat spreaders to keep the heat produced under control.
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=603
There may be more trouble shuffling data between two CPUs with just 6 or 8 DIMMs. I'd like to see a single cpu with 3 x 4GB configuration setup. Or 6 x 2GB, also 12GB. And then compare to 4 x 4GB. Get the dual cpu out of the equation.
Future I think means 2nd generation Nehalem 2010, with the move to shrink to 32nm.
*Intel bringing out Nehalem-EX*
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16981
*Intel to include error correction with server chips*
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=116423
The best upgrade you can do, you did already, SSDs.