System RAM running in dual channel affect Integrated graphics card?

[gert21445]

OK. So I have an HP Pavillion m7750n desktop pc, with the stock A8M2N-LA (NodusM3) motherboard and a NVIDIA GeForce 6150LE integrated graphics card, with a bandwidth of 4.3 GB/s in GPU-Z (because it uses system RAM, and I have PC2-4200 RAM/DDR2-533. Since I have 3x1gb ram sticks installed, my memory is running in single-channel mode, and I was wondering, if I took out one of the 1 GB sticks to make the RAM run in dual-channel, would the integrated graphics card's bandwidth be increased as well (eg. 4.3 GB/s single-channel = 8.6 GB/s dual channel)? If so, wouldn't it be better if I just used two sticks of RAM, because I'd rather double my integrated graphics card's bandwidth and lose 1 GB of RAM? Thanks!

 

[COLGeek]

The difference between single and dual channel is actually less than you might think. Given that the 6150 is kind of anemic by today's standards, there really isn't much you can do to increase your integrated GPU's effectiveness (short of adding a discrete GPU which would increase your overall system significantly since you would no longer be sharing resources with the video adapter). More memory is generally better. Keep the 3GB and add a discrete GPU to optimize your config. Good luck!

 

[johnnyq1233]

You would be better to get any decent video card..on board graphics suck sooo bad.
Even if you had 12GB of ram it wouldn't matter either in single or dual channel mode it would still suck!
Invest in a decent radeon or Nvidia card and you'll see a huge DIFFERENCE IN PERFORMANCE!
Hope this helps....JQ

 

[gert21445]

No but I'm just wondering, would the bandwidth increase to 8 GB/s?

 

[COLGeek]

No but I'm just wondering, would the bandwidth increase to 8 GB/s?

No, it really doesn't work like that. This is one of those areas that requires a detailed, caveated, and painful discussion (in some ways). Dual is better than single channel. That is a given. How much so depends on what you are doing. Basic computing, including gaming doesn't gain a significant boost in performance when going from single to dual channel. For most users, the differences are simply negligible.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

There have been varying reports as to the performance increase of dual-channel configurations, with some tests citing significant performance gains while others suggest almost no gain.

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.[3] Another comparison by laptoplogic.com resulted in a similar conclusion for integrated graphics.[4] The test results published by Tom's Hardware had a discrete graphics comparison.

The difference can be far more significant in applications that manipulate large amounts of data in memory. A comparison by TechConnect Magazine demonstrated considerable gains for dual-channel in tasks using block sizes greater than 4 MB, and during stream processing by the CPU.[5][dead link]

The link to the page is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture