[SOLVED] How many RAM sticks will offer best performance for Gaming?

[Gamefreaknet]

I've seen a few Youtube videos and had a look at some tech sites about memory and have so far come to the conclusion that dual memory RAM (2 RAM sticks) is better than single channel RAM (1 RAM stick) however if 2 RAM sticks provide better performance than 1 RAM stick then would 4 RAM sticks offer better performance than 2 RAM sticks (all at the same memory Mhz)?

 

[Lafong]

Typically no if the same total capacity, but I'm sure there are exceptions.

 

[Bob.B]

I've seen a few Youtube videos and had a look at some tech sites about memory and have so far come to the conclusion that dual memory RAM (2 RAM sticks) is better than single channel RAM (1 RAM stick) however if 2 RAM sticks provide better performance than 1 RAM stick then would 4 RAM sticks offer better performance than 2 RAM sticks (all at the same memory Mhz)?

A 2x8 kit is kind of the sweet spot.

Note that word 'kit'.

 

[thx1138v2]

Four modules might give you better performance if they are in a quad channel system but in a 2 channel system you will just be running two, two channel buses so I doubt that would give you any better performance.

The way channels work is like this: each module (stick) has a 64-bit wide bus to the memory controller. A dual channel system makes the bus appear to be 128 bits wide, that is 128 bits are transferred each time. A quad channel machine would make the bus appear to be 256 bits wide and you might get corresponding performance. It will, however, depend on how the software is written so I'm not sure how much, if any, performance gain you would actually see.