Single channel vs Dual channel for budget Athlon II X4 build?

[996GT2]

I'm planning to build an Athlon II X4 640 system around an AMD 780L motherboard. I'm looking at options for RAM right now, and prices for 2GBx2 or 4GBx1 DDR3 kits are around the same.

So my question is, would the better upgradeability of going with a single 4GB DIMM offset any performance losses from not running dual channel? Would it only be a very small performance loss compared to running 2x2GB?

 

[nanaki333]

just go with the single 4GB. you're not going to notice much of a difference. i did a quick search to find something that compares them and found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLCEMW-kfY

 

[jjmIII]

The answer: 2x4gb :sneaky:

No really. I'd go single stick of 4gb so you can add another later.

 

[Absolution75]

Agreed, the only thing it will affect is synthetic benchmarks - OH NOES!!!!

 

[GundamF91]

On dual vs. single channel, it won't matter much in daily use, but synthetic benchmark tests have generally shown a 5% increase in performance due to increased throughput. I wouldn't really worry about it much unless you do massive memory-intensive computing or gaming.

Now I doubt you'll ever really have 8GB for a budget Athlon II X4. Unless you can get 1x4GB cheaper, I'd go with 2x2GB. The reason is that in the event one stick goes bad, you will still be able to run it while you RMA the other stick. Otherwise you'd be stuck unless you happen to have a spare stick or pull one from another computer that also runs DDR3. The 2nd stick acts as your redundancy.

On the other hand, you did mention upgradability, so if you think you might do 8GB, then you should grab a single 4GB stick for now. That said, if you're going 8GB, you might as well get 2x4GB now like said above. You will then have matched modules that will perform well together. It should still work if you buy a different modules later on, but it's not a guarantee, and I generally dont' like to mix and match parts that need to work in sync.