Advantage of one stick of 256 meg

[ComfortablyNumb]

Is there any advantage to using 1 stick of PC 133 256 meg memory
compared to 2 sticks of PC 133 128 meg with same stats?

 

[Ethernet]

Yup... you leave one slot open for expasion when you can afford that second 256 meg Dimm *drools*

 

[Twilling]

You only use one slot and this is very important when you have a motherboard with 2 or mabe 3 slots....

 

[LXi]

But, the advantage of 2 sticks of 128MB, is that when one dies, you still have the other one. And if you have multiple machines, its sometimes very handy to move the RAMs around.

 

[GroundOO]

good point LXi

 

[Dulanic]

Basically it comes down to do you need to expand later? I have 2 128MB sticks and if I need I can always add another 128MB or 256MB stick.... Im not worried about using the memory in the future cause there will be bigger and better as always.

 

[Mem]

LXi made a very good point ,I was in this boat a few months ago, if I had then a second stick of ram it would have saved me all the hassle of sending the ram back to Crucial for testing.

 

[toph99]

does it make any difference in latency, or anything like that? i would assume that it would be marginally faster to have on stick because all of the memory is in the one stick, not having to jump around the slots to find what it's looking for. am i totally off here?

 

[shabby]

Some time ago i read an article on an overclocking site that said at an extremly high FSB two 64meg modules were more stable than one 128meg module, dunno if its true or not.

 

[Dan]

I have 2 128MB sticks in my system. My reasoning for this is a variation on LXi's point. I may sell 2 systems at some point -- and each one will have 128MB of RAM.

 

[Ficcion]

Lxi,

Never had RAM die....knock on wood...doesn't seem like to much of an issue to me. If RAM is bad, it seems like it starts out that way?

 

[AtomClock]

Two sticks of 128 would allow you to configure your ram for 4 way interleave otherwise all you can do is 2 way interleave (I don't think I spelled that correct) and the memory performance of 4 way is much better than single or 2 way interleave. Or at least that is true with the VIA chipset. I am not sure about the intel chipset.

 

[LXi]

Ficcion:

I have seen RAM die. The main reason I like 2 sticks is the flexibility, I have two machines, 2 sticks will be very handy to move RAM around.

 

[barlav]

I just had to make this decision also the other day. I went with 2 128 MB sticks. Main reason was for flexibility and backup in case one fails.

 

[Spook]

I know how to solve this....


























Get 2 sticks of 256Meg Ram... Ohhh .... Ohhh... More, power....

and so cheap...

 

[MrCraphead]

I'm gonna have to agree w/ Spook on this one.

 

[peemo]

AtomClock,

I don't think you necessarily need 2 sticks to do memory interleaving. See these threads:

How do I speed up my memory bandwidth? (Essential when play Q3 or UT online)

Interleaving and CAS - worth playing with?

Also, there is still some question regarding the effects of one 256MB stick vs two 128MB sticks. See this article:

Modding a DIMM for performance / Mushkin Rev.3

Sounds like you may not be able to reach quite as high frequencies with higher density modules but there are advantages too.



<< The main advantage of using a single DIMM as opposed to two DIMMs is that the clock signal to unused DIMM slots can be shut down in the BIOS by enabling PCI/DIMM CLK autodetect . Therefore, the clock signal does not need to be diluted to the individual DIMM slots. In case several DIMMs are being used, this advantage is partially lost, depending on the number of DIMMs and slots available. Nonetheless, adding twice the amount of load in form of capacitors that make up the memory cells , will cause a hit with regard to the highest frequency possible which is why, in general, 256 MB DIMMs are slower than 128 MB DIMMs. >>



Here I take &quot;slower&quot; to mean lower limit, e.g. your 256MB stick only runs 2-2-2 to 150MHz while your 2 128MB sticks run 2-2-2 at 166MHz.

Cheers.