If your mother board has dual channel can you put 1 stick?

[lightning247365]

If you have a dual channel motherboard can you only put one stick of ram, how of a difference would there be if I used dual channel.
Thanks.

 

[tachybana]

Dual = Two. Yes you need two sticks (you will buy the Memory in Pairs)

 

[dish_moose]

You can run just one stick - the reason dual channel is better is that it doubles the memory bandwidth.
-Bruce

 

[IInuyasha74]

That is not true. You can put only one in. Dual channel is a feature saying you can run the RAM in a "Dual" or "Single" channel mode. It has a few different effects, but the only important effect of note is being able to put more RAM in.

If you want to use only one single RAM stick there will be no issues.

 

[dish_moose]

The most important "effect" of dual channel was to increase memory capacity - not true. On memory transfers, you get twice the data. On 2011 systems(quad channel) you get 4 times. That is the reason for dual, triple, or quad channel - higher memory bandwidth.
-Bruce

 

[IInuyasha74]

The most important "effect" of dual channel was to increase memory capacity - not true. On memory transfers, you get twice the data. On 2011 systems(quad channel) you get 4 times. That is the reason for dual, triple, or quad channel - higher memory bandwidth.
-Bruce

Yes it is true. It does double the bandwidth also, but I will notice a bigger performance boost from having 2x8GB RAM in single channel mode than I would notice having 4x1GB RAM sticks in dual channel mode.

Bandwidth is important, however unless you are using integrated graphics then you will not notice as big a difference between single and dual channel RAM.

 

[dish_moose]

Depends on what you are doing. Gaming probably not - memory intensive applications - yes. But your first statement was misleading. The main reason for dual channel is double the memory data transfer not double the memory. If this was the case then mobos would come with multiple single channel memory sockets.
-Bruce

 

[IInuyasha74]

Depends on what you are doing. Gaming probably not - memory intensive applications - yes. But your first statement was misleading. The main reason for dual channel is double the memory data transfer not double the memory. If this was the case then mobos would come with multiple single channel memory sockets.
-Bruce

My original statement was very simplified and not miss leading. No where did I say it doubles the memory. I just said it allows you to add more. Being that you have 4 RAM slots instead of just 2 RAM slots this is pretty evident. Which I guess does double your memory since you can buy twice as much.

This is the case, motherboards do come with multiple single channel memory sockets. In fact, all of them do.

As for gaming, double bandwidth is very important for that. On an APU or using Intel HD graphics you will see a decent improvement running in dual channel mode. You would also with programs like Winrar, but when are using the internet, watching a movie, looking at pictures, typing a paper, and the majority of basic tasks having only single channel RAM does not cause significant decline in system performance.

Again, having single channel 2x8GB RAM will improve performance more than having 4x1GB RAM in dual channel.

 

[dish_moose]

I guess when I game I always use dedicated gpus with their own VRAM - you are right about faster transfer helping APUs etc.
you said "Again, having single channel 2x8GB RAM will improve performance more than having 4x1GB RAM in dual channel." Why in the world if you had 2x8GB ram would you NOT run them dual channel. Oh and yes 4x1GB dual channel is faster as long as you do not run out of RAM.Bottom line if you have equal amounts of RAM - running dual channel will always be faster than single channel.
-Bruce

 

[IInuyasha74]

I guess when I game I always use dedicated gpus with their own VRAM - you are right about faster transfer helping APUs etc.
you said "Again, having single channel 2x8GB RAM will improve performance more than having 4x1GB RAM in dual channel." Why in the world if you had 2x8GB ram would you NOT run them dual channel. Oh and yes 4x1GB dual channel is faster as long as you do not run out of RAM.Bottom line if you have equal amounts of RAM - running dual channel will always be faster than single channel.
-Bruce

The APUs can do some pretty impressive things but they are very sensitive to RAM. You should play with one if you ever get a chance. Its like your whole system is one graphics card that you can change every part to.

Ahh see here I was actually making a mistake, sorry. I was under the impression that motherboards with only two RAM slots were single channel only. That used to be the case like with the old socket 754 systems and etc. so I assumed it was still the same.

If you do have the same amount of RAM, dual channel will perform faster but I still say with RAM capacity is more important than speed or bandwidth. Not so significant now that I know pretty much all motherboards have dual channel regardless of the number of RAM slots though.

 

[foresterbigboss]

so like .. if i were to use a 2 single stick 4GB RAM on a dual channel MOBO , will it be 8GB in speed or it'll still just gonna be 4GB?

 

[IInuyasha74]

Do not restart an old dead thread if you have a similar question. Start a new thread.