I want to get 8gb of RAM, is there a noticeable difference in performance between 1 stick of 8gb and 2 sticks of 4gb?

[dr frued]

I want to get 8gb of RAM, is there a noticeable difference in performance between 1 stick of 8gb and 2 sticks of 4gb?

 

[brispuss]

One module will operate in single channel mode. Two identical spec'd modules will operate in dual channel mode.

Dual channel operation for some applications will show some improvement in performance/speed where heavy use of system memory is required. However, for many other applications and for gaming where there is relatively less use of system memory, there is very little, if any, obvious improvement in performance.

But dual channel operation is recommended anyway. This is done to maximize available memory bandwidth for those programs that make (heavy) use of system memory. So 2 x 4 GB of memory would be the preferred choice over 1 x 8 GB memory.

 

[D_Perk]

i look at it this way.... What is more comfortable, fitting 4 people into a 2 seat car or a 4 seat car. same works with ram. the more channels it has the smoother the system will run. Also some say it doesn't matter right now but look at the GHz of the ram, buy the best you can afford.

If this is for gaming...

Games right now will use 30-45%( at most) of 8 gigs if i remember right. Now are you going to be using team speak, add-ons, running multi monitors, watching youtube ect ect. may use up to 35-65% (based on my system and what i have running when i had 8 gigs)
Now if you plan to steam via twitch or other streaming sites you may want to think about bumping it up to 16 gigs unless you have or plan to build a streaming PC. For me just running the game. TS. OBS, a streaming assistant blah blah blah i was hitting around 60-80% usage. once i slapped in 2x8gig sticks with everything running i sit around 35-50% of usage.

 

[JingLuci]

You might want to check if your cpu and mobo runs dual channel or quad channel. If its dual channel then going for 2 sticks will yield better performance than having only 1 stick of ram. But at the end of the day, it shouldn't really cause any drastic difference in performance.

 

[gerr]

Synthetic benchmarks = yes

Real world benchmarks = no