As we’re always in the pursuit of making your Mac (and our Macs, and the Mac of that nice guy down the street) faster, we have confirmed that the new Mac Pro 2010 models do address dual- and triple-channel memory addressing.
Similar to dual-channel interleaving in previous models, installing memory in matched sets of three will allow the Mac to distribute memory functions across the modules in that set, allowing faster access to that information. In triple-channel mode, you can see up to 15% more memory bandwidth over dual-channel addressing.
Technically, this isn’t anything new; the 2009 Mac Pros also had this feature. However, when they came out, there were few applications took advantage of this and most apps didn’t show any real-world advantage over dual-channel setups.
As software progresses to take advantage of the capabilities of new Macs, though, that will change. If you upgrade your 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro to a triple-channel setup now, you can rest assured that—both now and in years to come—your system will be performing to the best of its ability.
