OT Dual Channel Memory

For many years I have been hearing all the buzz about Dual Channel
memory how it was so much faster than single channel or single stick,
you need to use match sticks and in pairs to get this supercharged
memory to work, etc.

At long last I have just recieved and article which test this urban
myth (at least it seems a myth now).
The test were run using Windows Vista 64, a suite of productivety
applications and (1) stick of 2G ram or (2) sticks of 1G ram. The
results were timed and given in seconds to complete.

Here are the results:

Dual Channel = 2718 sec = 45.3 min
Single Stick = 2774 sec = 46.2 min

A difference of 56 sec or less than 1 min for a ~ 45 min test.

This to me is not a large percentage increase and is probably why Dell
installs 3G ram in some systems (one 2G and one 1G). These are not
matched pairs as required for Dual channel operation but I don't think
that a user would notice the difference in day to day usage. A gamer
might but again I really doubt it.
Give this one to the Myth Busters to test.

Art

On Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:48:23 +1000, Star@*.* wrote:

For many years I have been hearing all the buzz about Dual Channel
memory how it was so much faster than single channel or single stick,
you need to use match sticks and in pairs to get this supercharged
memory to work, etc.

At long last I have just recieved and article which test this urban
myth (at least it seems a myth now).
The test were run using Windows Vista 64, a suite of productivety
applications and (1) stick of 2G ram or (2) sticks of 1G ram. The
results were timed and given in seconds to complete.

Here are the results:

Dual Channel = 2718 sec = 45.3 min
Single Stick = 2774 sec = 46.2 min

A difference of 56 sec or less than 1 min for a ~ 45 min test.

This to me is not a large percentage increase and is probably why Dell
installs 3G ram in some systems (one 2G and one 1G). These are not
matched pairs as required for Dual channel operation but I don't think
that a user would notice the difference in day to day usage. A gamer
might but again I really doubt it.
Give this one to the Myth Busters to test.

Art


Art, as I remember when I was buying memory a year or so ago, I also
read similar results (maybe even less??) that in my mind did not make
a compelling argument to go with dual channel memory just for the sake
of speed. That said, to be fair, I'm not a gamer so likely this is
why I can say this. I ended up going that route but only because the
brand was better known (for the options I had in mind then) and the
pricing was similar so you might say I really did it for reliability
(brand name) not speed tho I may have gotten both in the end.

dual channel memory is suppose to be more efficient.
I have three machines 2 of which have dual channel and one that does not.
The one without it works just fine, it is not a gaming machine but factions
as
a 24/7 work station for a small business.
Bottom line is I see no difference in performing similar tasks on all three
machines.

Star@*.* wrote in message
...
For many years I have been hearing all the buzz about Dual Channel
memory how it was so much faster than single channel or single stick,
you need to use match sticks and in pairs to get this supercharged
memory to work, etc.

At long last I have just recieved and article which test this urban
myth (at least it seems a myth now).
The test were run using Windows Vista 64, a suite of productivety
applications and (1) stick of 2G ram or (2) sticks of 1G ram. The
results were timed and given in seconds to complete.

Here are the results:

Dual Channel = 2718 sec = 45.3 min
Single Stick = 2774 sec = 46.2 min

A difference of 56 sec or less than 1 min for a ~ 45 min test.

This to me is not a large percentage increase and is probably why Dell
installs 3G ram in some systems (one 2G and one 1G). These are not
matched pairs as required for Dual channel operation but I don't think
that a user would notice the difference in day to day usage. A gamer
might but again I really doubt it.
Give this one to the Myth Busters to test.

Art

On Dec 5, 10:48 pm, Star@*.* wrote:
For many years I have been hearing all the buzz about Dual Channel
memory how it was so much faster than single channel or single stick,
you need to use match sticks and in pairs to get this supercharged
memory to work, etc.

At long last I have just recieved and article which test this urban
myth (at least it seems a myth now).
The test were run using Windows Vista 64, a suite of productivety
applications and (1) stick of 2G ram or (2) sticks of 1G ram. The
results were timed and given in seconds to complete.

Here are the results:

Dual Channel = 2718 sec = 45.3 min
Single Stick = 2774 sec = 46.2 min

A difference of 56 sec or less than 1 min for a ~ 45 min test.

This to me is not a large percentage increase and is probably why Dell
installs 3G ram in some systems (one 2G and one 1G). These are not
matched pairs as required for Dual channel operation but I don't think
that a user would notice the difference in day to day usage. A gamer
might but again I really doubt it.
Give this one to the Myth Busters to test.

Art


Both Dell machines I received had 3GB - 4 DIMMS so it was all
paired.

Star@*.* wrote:
For many years I have been hearing all the buzz about Dual Channel
memory how it was so much faster than single channel or single stick,
you need to use match sticks and in pairs to get this supercharged
memory to work, etc.

At long last I have just recieved and article which test this urban
myth (at least it seems a myth now).
The test were run using Windows Vista 64, a suite of productivety
applications and (1) stick of 2G ram or (2) sticks of 1G ram. The
results were timed and given in seconds to complete.

Here are the results:

Dual Channel = 2718 sec = 45.3 min
Single Stick = 2774 sec = 46.2 min

A difference of 56 sec or less than 1 min for a ~ 45 min test.

This to me is not a large percentage increase and is probably why Dell
installs 3G ram in some systems (one 2G and one 1G). These are not
matched pairs as required for Dual channel operation but I don't think
that a user would notice the difference in day to day usage. A gamer
might but again I really doubt it.
Give this one to the Myth Busters to test.

Art

This is yet another case of a lot of industry hype about almost nothing.
A change of slightly more than 2% in performance is almost nothing and
surely cannot be discerned by a normal person doing normal tasks over
the course of a day.

OMG, this may result in one more frame per second for the typical high
end game. For the gamers, too, this is almost nothing, except for
bragging rights.

An old friend and colleague from way back once said that if the
performance of a system does not improve by at least 50%, people will
not recognize any difference. Even with quad core versus dual core etc,
one system rarely performs 50% faster than another from the previous
generation. For most workaday tasks performed by most people, system
performance as perceived by folks plateaued about 4 years ago with the
3.0 and 3.2GHz P4 CPUs.

Yes, some graphics intense applications and some combination of
multi-tasked concurrently running software will actually run quicker,
smoother and better with the newer quad core systems. But until there
is some sort of major paradigm shift in the way people use computers,
all that extra computing horsepower goes unused most of the time.

.... Ben Myers