Photoshop - single vs. dual channel memory

[James14198]

I'm currently in the process of helping my friend build a desktop system. It's mostly for gaming, although they occasionally dip into Photoshop as well.

Is there a significant performance difference between single and dual channel memory when running Photoshop?

Thanks,
James

 

[Karadjgne]

Yes and no. Dual channel doubles the available bandwidth over single channel, generally allowing upto a 20% performance increase. So that's the yes, technically.
The no is in the way of usage. Most consumer apps, games, programs etc really can't make good use of the available bandwidth in a single stick, never mind dual channel, so while you get 2x the bandwidth, it's really almost never saturated to the point you'd actually see any difference.

The only real advantages to dual sticks is smaller sizes usually have lower timings, so run a little faster anyway, so 8Gb sticks might see Cas14-16, a 16Gb stick might be Cas 16-18. The other is redundancy. Ram is not perfect every time. It doesn't take much abuse to kill a stick. A simple spike can destroy the first 64Kb, making the ram useless. With just 1 stick, your pc is dead if the ram errors, and will stay that way until the ram is replaced, only to find out the ram is OK, the issue is elsewhere, but you couldn't boot the pc to find that out. With dual ram, you have a good chance of using just one of the sticks to start the pc and then diagnose from there. You may need to run just half your normal ram for a minute, but at least now you have a starting point, instead of a guess and expensive investment just to try and get the pc running.

 

[geofelt]

You might want too read this article on photoshop workstation build.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Photoshop-CC-139

the applicable ram issue is how much.

it is important that you ensure you have enough system RAM available. The exact amount you need will depend on exactly what you are doing, but based on your document size (as shown in the Info Panel or status bar) we recommend a minimum of 16GB of RAM for 500MB documents or smaller, 32GB for 500MB-1GB, and 64GB+ for even larger documents.