2*2G or 1*4G ?

[hooman79108]

Hi,
I'm going to buy 4G DDR3 RAM for my pc . should i buy 2*2G or 1*4G and why ?
my M.B. type is Gigabyte GA-PA65-UD3-B3

 

[Shmee]

hey, and welcome to AT! First, is there already memory in there? How many slots are being used?

I would personally recommend 8 GB as a sweet spot, so either 4x2 or 2x4 would be good. 2x4 would be better if you want to add more later

 

[hooman79108]

I'm going to buy a new M.B. which has two memory slots.
why are 2*2G is better than 1*4G ?

 

[Shmee]

actually, when I looked up ur motherboard, it listed 4 slots. And I would recommend getting 8 GB of memory, not 4. The reason multiples of 2 are better, is because they will run in dual channel mode, which increases memory performance, though it isnt a huge deal.

I would recommend getting a 2x4GB kit of ddr3. Also, what will you be doing with this PC? What CPU will you be using?

 

[hooman79108]

sorry that was mistyping. you're right it has 4 slots.
I'm going to buy core i5 2500 and i want a pc for gaming and internet surfing.

 

[Shmee]

good stuff! What video card you going to use? That is perhaps the most important for gaming! Also, what power supply will you be using?

 

[Voo]

why are 2*2G is better than 1*4G ?

Theoretically using two RAM sticks instead of one allows the MB to run the RAM in dual-channel mode which means higher bandwidth. In practice you won't notice the difference and one 4gb stick is quite more futureproof if you ever want to add additional memory (but then 8gb will be enough for quite some time for the average user and your mb has 4 slots).

One other advantage of a 4gb stick is that less RAM slots are somewhat more stable when overclocking.

 

[veri745]

two sticks of RAM is ideal for utilizing both memory channels and maximizing stability when overclocking.

However, the difference between 1 * 4GB stick and 2 * 2GB sticks will be minimal. 8GB has become the standard recently since RAM prices are so low. I would recommend 2 * 4GB.

 

[Emulex]

two sticks is far faster than 1 stick these days. and overclocking yields less than you'd think. i'd rather have a stable 2 stick setup than overclock 1 stick to get the same bandwidth. and 3 channel is even faster. my mac pro is 1/3 per channel. run 1 channel and its so slow it's not funny - 2 chan's = 66% - 3 chan = 100% - 4chan?