Is it better to use 1x 8gigs or RAM, or 2x 4gigs?

hunted22

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Dec 4, 2009
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Hello..

My question is which perform better.. a one piece of memory on one channel, or splitting the amount of ram into two pieces and using the dual ram?

I asked that question before(not on TH), but I didn't get a conclusive answer. some people said this and some said that.. so please answer me if you are 100% because I'm waiting to find this out before I going shopping for the built.


thanks in advance
 

monsta

Splendid
I'll be straight to the point and no bs.

2 Ram sticks = Dual mode = Faster

1 Ram Stick = Single Mode = Slower

Use 2X4GB Ram Sticks as it will run optimal in Dual mode, running in single mode is a slower option.

If your Motherboard has triple mode, using 3 sticks is faster than 1.

What Motherboard are you using?
 
D

Deleted member 217926

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Running 2 matched sticks allows your motherboard to run in dual channel mode. This is approximately 4% faster than running a single stick. Most people have no idea that the gain is so low and will recommend running 2 sticks just for dual channel. The real advantage to running 2 x 4GB sticks is that is normally cheaper than a single 8GB stick.
 

as33

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Mar 31, 2012
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sbE and I extreme are both triple channel not that those can use the max bandwidth but its still recommendable (3x4 is faster then 1x12) ... as for the normal non extreme versions of CPU like I's sb's ivy's dual channel is recommendable and yes there is a clear line of performance gains of using dual channel over single so 2x4 is faster then 1x8
 



Sandybridge-E is quad channel
 
D

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Show me some benchmarks proving a " clear line of performance gains ".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-channel_memory_architecture

" Tom's Hardware found little significant difference between single-channel and dual-channel configurations in synthetic and gaming benchmarks (using a "modern" system setup). In its tests, dual channel gave at best a 5% speed increase in memory-intensive tasks.[6] Another comparison by laptoplogic.com resulted in a similar conclusion for integrated graphics."

The orignal article.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PARALLEL-PROCESSING,1705-3.html
 


Performance gains from dual, triple and quad channel architectures are rarely realized when running a single application, and almost never realized when running a single threaded application. The highest gain is realized when running lots of highly orthogonal applications because data is interleaved across multiple channels.