Single/Dual Channel DDR3

[WildW]

Hi folks,

I just built an i3 (Haswell) media centre/Steam big-screen gaming box, and I realise now that I did cheap-out a bit on the ram by buying a single 4GB stick of DDR3-1600. . . it was cheap and big enough.

I ran Windows experience index and, although we don't put any faith in those silly numbers, I do have the memory score clamped at 5.9 when everything else is over 7 - probably because it sees a single stick. I don't care about that particular benchmark, but it did make me wonder if using a single channel memory configuration will have any measurable effect on performance? It is after all potentially cutting memory bandwidth in half?

I have a discrete GPU so I'm not worried about IGP performance.

 

[Deders]

Probably not for streaming but you might get an improvement in some games with a 2nd channel. more so if you had a quad core in there.

 

[Cerb]

If you have a video card, it won't make an appreciable difference, though only having 4GB might, depending on games being played, and background programs running at the time.

 

[WildW]

For now the graphics card (Radeon 4770) is more of a limitation than 4GB total memory. I guess I'm really asking whether its a case of "It won't make much difference" or "OMG that's going to be awful." I haven't gotten as far as running many games yet - main purpose of the upgrade was a bit more CPU power for emulation (PS2 / Gamecube) which is working great =)

 

[Cerb]

With any add-on GPU, the difference is going to be minimal. I don't feel like it now, but if you look back some threads, I found at least one review testing just that, and the difference ranged from 0 to typically <3%. 4GB v. 8GB might become an issue, but single-channel RAM is fine, unless you're going with just the IGP. Both Intel and AMD"s memory controllers, and speculative functionality, have gotten good enough that only servers running heavily-loaded DBMSes, and/or multiple IO-limited VMs, are really in ened of more channels of RAM, for either the added bandwidth or the added IOs.

 

[DominionSeraph]

You're fine.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have a discrete GPU so I'm not worried about IGP performance.

Then you're just fine. With a caveat that lead though Cerb's post:

With any add-on GPU, the difference is going to be minimal. I don't feel like it now, but if you look back some threads, I found at least one review testing just that, and the difference ranged from 0 to typically <3%. 4GB v. 8GB might become an issue, but single-channel RAM is fine, unless you're going with just the IGP. Both Intel and AMD"s memory controllers, and speculative functionality, have gotten good enough that only servers running heavily-loaded DBMSes, and/or multiple IO-limited VMs, are really in ened of more channels of RAM, for either the added bandwidth or the added IOs.

There is ONE scenario on normal desktops/laptops that benefit tremendously from dual-channel RAM, and that is when you use the IGP. You can loose 40-50% of IGP performance running single channel.