P67 Blue Or Black Dimm Slots?

Question

The question seems to come up often enough to open a thread about it. The manuals for the P67's are fairly clear on recommending using the blue dimm slots, & for the very first initial system startup, one stick in the primary blue dimm slot closest to the CPU. There has to be a specific reason for that, although I don't exactly know what it is. Some seem to find a need for a gigantic CPU cooler that covers the primary slot so as to make it unusable, & ask about populating the black slots instead. At first, I made the mistake of advising folks that the blue slots must be used or it wouldn't boot at all. Well, that is not true, as I tested it on my B2 & B3 board, & they booted just fine when the RAM is in the black slots. However, for the first initial startup, I did use the primary blue slot with only one stick of RAM in the system.
The other question comes up if a performance difference is noted using the black instead of the blue slots. Here again, on any given day or on someone else's system, the results may come out completely different, but in my tests, the blue won out, but barely, & I really mean barely. 9 passes of 3X runs each in both blue & black slots & under two different screen resolutions gave these results;
Blue slots   FPS Average = 130.553
Black slots  FPS Average = 130.056  for a rather miniscule advantage to the blue slots of a poultry 0.497 FPS
Max. Resolution with my LCD netted an even closer spread.
Blue slots   FPS Average = 82.178
Black slots  FPS Average = 82.150  for an even tighter difference of only 0.028 FPS favoring the blue!
 

Answer 1

Quote
What test were you using
Crysis Bench Tool. CPU 4.7, RAM 1600 CR 1 7 7 7 19 tRFC 50 @ 1.552v's.
Believe you were using a B2 board? That will be a great comparison when you get the B3 & run your tests again. Please feel free to post your results here. Knowledge is power!