Curse

Pickletron · Dec 07, 2007, 01:12 PM // 13:12

I know it's not needed but I have 3x1GB sticks of RAM.
I heard that 3GB of RAM performs slower than 2GB because of some weird channel thing, is this right?

zamial · Dec 07, 2007, 01:19 PM // 13:19

It depends on the ram.

Quaker · Dec 07, 2007, 05:05 PM // 17:05

And whether your motherboard is set up for dual-channel.

iridescentfyre · Dec 07, 2007, 05:23 PM // 17:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pickletron

I know it's not needed but I have 3x1GB sticks of RAM.
I heard that 3GB of RAM performs slower than 2GB because of some weird channel thing, is this right?

I had heard that as well. It has something to do with 3GB increasing the time it takes to access what's stored in RAM. Personally I doubt its anything you'd notice unless you were doing some seriously sensitive system benchmarks.

I wouldn't recommend buying 3GB of RAM just because the performance gain is minimal at best. But if you've already got them you may as well use them, unless there's a problem.

lordpwn · Dec 07, 2007, 07:15 PM // 19:15

The "channel thing" refers to "dual channel", which is how most recent computers can access their RAM via two channels at once if the RAM configuration is perfectly symmetrical: that is, the RAM sticks in memory slots 1 and 3 match the RAM in memory slots 2 and 4, for example. The exact setup may vary between motherboards, so the slots are usually color coded to indicate which channel they belong to.

Obviously, dual channel doesn't work if the number of memory sticks isn't even, or if they are of different capacities or vary too much in their other specs, which is why some memory manufacturers sell "dual channel kits" that have been tested to work well together in dual channel mode.

In practice the performance difference is somewhere below 5% outside of dedicated benchmarks as there's plenty of other memory access bottlenecks in most computer architectures. Since you probably got those 3 GB's for some reason it's probably a better idea to keep them and forget about a dual channel setup.

Pickletron · Dec 07, 2007, 11:20 PM // 23:20

Well my motherboard is a "Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3" http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/22999/.

I already have the 3 sticks, would it be better just to take one out or leave all 3 in?

The Meth · Dec 07, 2007, 11:51 PM // 23:51

From what I have heard the only time you get a real performance difference is in tests which specifically test memory speeds, in real programs the difference is almost nothing. On the other hand, you will probably never experience a real need for 3GB in the next year or two unless you are doing some serious multitasking or are running Vista (in which case I pity you). If you are concerned about performance in guild wars, don't be, it runs at max on my 3 year old system lol. 3GB will probably help by the time GW2 comes out though. In the end the difference is a few % in memory speed which is very rarely the bottleneck of a system vs possibly using up all available ram and using the pagefile which WILL seriously slow you down.

Aerian_Skybane · Dec 10, 2007, 07:48 PM // 19:48

Yep, most on here are correct. Most modern motherboards are built with Dual Channel ideologies, which is pretty damn fast. If your mother board doesn't then you are fine, but if it does, that third stick adds more RAM to your system, but is limited to the speed of the two matching sticks (even more modern mobos are built with matching slots), so therefore its like having more space, but it takes more time to ruffle through them for the data.

My board is an even newer one, which allows Dual Channel or asynchronous reading automatically, although I only run 2 GB for now which is excellent in XP (not so much for Vista).

So, unless you are running an older, single channel board, I would take one out or buy another stick if you don't feel like just taking one out.

Pickletron · Dec 11, 2007, 01:13 AM // 01:13

Thanks a lot everyone, really cleared things up for me!

p.s. Not being sarcastic.

Lord Sojar · Dec 11, 2007, 04:19 AM // 04:19

Depends on what your doing.

More RAM for heavy program lifting

Less RAM but dual channel capabilities for blazing speed. The choice is yours.

Refering however to the MYTH that the more RAM you have, the slower it is. That is FALSE. The memory timings/latency plays a role in this, but to specifically say that the amount has ANY effect is silly. Memory controllers (internal or NB based) can file data to addresses at the same speed if the latency is the same.

So in review:

If Person A tells you that 3GBs (1GB x 3 sticks) performs slower then 2GB (1GB x 2 sticks), they are correct simply because of dual channel capabilities.

If Person B tells you that 2GBs (2GB x 1 Stick) performs slower then 2GB (512MB x 4) [provided the latencies are the same], well... Kevin Spacey can answer that... ."WROOOOOOOONG!"

Hyper.nl · Dec 11, 2007, 07:57 AM // 07:57

I can recommend to use pairs of memory with dual channel. It gives youte a bit of extra performance.

If you have 3x 1 GB you may want to get another 1x 1 GB. Or maybe you can leave it at 2x 1 GB.
Make sure the memory speeds match.