RAM: Single Channel to Dual Channel.....no difference?


  1. Posts : 20
    Windows Ultimate sp 1 64 bit
       #1

    RAM: Single Channel to Dual Channel.....no difference?


    hi all,

    recently it came to my notice that i was running my RAM on single channel mode (2x2gb) on my dh67bl mobo. i saw it in cpu z and it showed single channel.

    So, i changed my ram and placed it in identical slots and now the Cpu z shows dual channel RAM. but i don't see any visible difference in performance.

    Why is it so? is there any performance difference in running the RAM in dual channel / single channel?

    kindly advice,
    regards,

    Ray
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 9,582
    Windows 8.1 Pro RTM x64
       #2

    Hi Ray,

    By placing your RAM into dual channel mode, you have effectively doubled its bandwidth, meaning that twice as much data can be transferred at a given point in time.

    There should, in theory, be a noticeable difference between single and dual channel mode. However, this depends on the application. For many programs, such as Office (Word, Excel, etc), there will be a slight difference but not as much as you will see with graphics editing or movie conversion.

    What is your current WEI score for the memory component? Rerun the assessment and you should see an improvement in this value.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 20
    Windows Ultimate sp 1 64 bit
    Thread Starter
       #3

    Dwarf said:
    Hi Ray,

    By placing your RAM into dual channel mode, you have effectively doubled its bandwidth, meaning that twice as much data can be transferred at a given point in time.

    There should, in theory, be a noticeable difference between single and dual channel mode. However, this depends on the application. For many programs, such as Office (Word, Excel, etc), there will be a slight difference but not as much as you will see with graphics editing or movie conversion.

    What is your current WEI score for the memory component? Rerun the assessment and you should see an improvement in this value.
    hi dwarf,

    my WEI score for memory component is 5.9, no difference in score after changing from single to dual channel.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #4

    Things like this I find are fairly common with computers. Our belief is always that changes like this should always lead to a noticeable performance increase, and in a case like going from single channel to dual channel RAM, it could be as much as a 2x boost in performance. However, so many of these things are only really noticeable in benchmarks and very specific tasks...but yet so many of us strive for these higher benchmark numbers even though in the end they really don't amount to much from a day-to-day usage standpoint.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 5,795
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1
       #5

    This is exactly the same principal of why RAID0 died out. Theory and reality are usually two different things. If you ran some synthetic benchmarks to gauge your memory scores, you would have noticed a difference in the scores. But, does that translate to any actual noticeable difference? No, not at all.

    A prime example of this is OEM tower systems, like Dells. If I sat two nearly identical systems in front of a person, and asked them to tell which one has 2x2 GB sticks and which system had 1x4 GB stick installed, there's no way you could tell from just using the system.
      My Computer


 

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