Is dual channel ram a joke ?

...for average/ non-enthustiast users ???

I mean, i have right now a pretty powerfull lap with dedicated gpu (asus N550JV) which idles around 10W which wifi on and full brightness and taking off a ram stick can lower idle power consumption by another 0,5-1,5 W. So the impact on battery life is noticeable at this stage.

So question is :

Is there any scenarios where dual chanel ram really offers substantial perf gain over single channel other than for igp ??????

I think one 8GB stick of 1,35V is enough when your idle power consumption is low and you care about battery life.

 

If maximum battery life is your main concern, I would agree.

If maximum performance/responsiveness per watt is your goal: Dual Channel RAM is a must.

 

Any proof/link to back up this statement ?

 

Here's a quick google search:

See:
Is Your Gaming Laptop's RAM Slowing It Down? | Maximum PC



As usual, the link above shows that 'it depends' on your specific workflow/program/game.


Over the years I have undervolted, throttled, dimmed the display and used other tricks to extend the battery life of my notebooks.

However, I have always undone any 'tweaks' that crippled the performance of the system even at the expense of battery life. A stuttering/pausing platform is nothing to be proud of when you get even half an hour or more of (unresponsive) extended use in return.


If the system is just going to be on/idle - I can see why removing a Sodimm might be tempting.

If the system is being used (enough) though - the responsiveness of the dual channel system in question will allow you to do more (even with less battery run time) than the same single channel system with potentially more (at idle) run time.


The linked testing is a little quirky:

They tested with a 32bit O/S.

They didn't test for battery life.

They didn't test for anything other than gaming.



With my hands on experience with different systems:

I always recommend 2x2GB configurations to clients - even those with 32bit O/S's - dual channel makes that much of a difference (and I've had to show a few that 2x4G is better than 1x8GB first hand - they marveled how obvious their setup was better with the same amount of RAM, but in dual channel mode).

Navigating the Windows O/S is smoother too. Not to mention web browsing, opening programs and PDF 'portfolio's' and anything related to a database (LR5, accounting software, etc.).


Yeah; responsiveness is a high priority for me (and I'm keenly aware of the lack of that 'snap') - I would be hard pressed to give it up even for two hours longer run time - let alone the few minutes I have seen in my systems.

 

Intgrated graphics depends greatly on dual channel RAM. Video/Audio encoding is also sensitive to dual channel RAM and RAM speed. Otherwise daily tasks and even gaming with a dedicated GPU it makes nary a difference.

 

..um, well. What essentially happens (and I know this isn't completely true, so don't sue me), is that when you have a dual-channel option, you can effectively read from two places in the ram-areas at the same time. And since industry standard ram (outside certain RAMBUS solutions) only ever has one pipe, the idea was to let the memory bus access individual ram-chips at the same preparation run.

You would want to do that because in certain situations that would mean you could prepare and read twice as fast to complete a read-operation. Or, more commonly, to read to one module, while writing to another (which would typically prepare for effective reads later). So.. great, right? But the drawback being that you're not really going to have all that many situations where a program writes to ram while preparing for a dual channel read. And in the massive majority of cases, you're simply not going to see any improvement at all. On average, we're perhaps talking about 10%.

But. Some programs will exploit it very effectively. And drivers that are written well can exploit dual-channel reads for operations that are typically meant to run independently on specific, small, memory areas. Since the program can prepare two blocks instead of just one each read. APUs and igps are a typical example here, where shader operations on a graphics card are pretty much completely parallelizable.. (or whatever it's called in English).

And you actually see that while it won't cut the running time of the program all that much on average, leaving reads and write queues with quicker response makes the system feel more snappy. So it's.. yes. A bit of a joke, but not completely.

 

An article on integrated gpu performance lol. Pointless when u have a dgpu.

You all talk about system responsiveness as it is even really noticeable when we talk about big stick of ram. I don't think so. We're not not speaking about one stick of 2GB that is easily overloaded in multi-tasking but 8GB here, which is enough for about everything.

High frequency ram and multi-channel have always been kind of elitist stuff for enthusiast and overclocking when ram frequency was linked to bus speed, if not for overcloking, it was giving just 5% of better perfs in best case scenarios.

HW do you think it really matter in video encoding ? I will dig into that.

[Discussion] RAM: Single vs Dual Channel speed benchmarks (1x8GB vs 2x8GB) : buildapc

As always kallogan is friggin right

There is even cases where single channel give better perfs lol

 

Mm. It's going to be rare to see actual drop in performance, I think. Since we're not talking about parallelism on larger areas than just one read operation on the low level anyway. And without threading, which might explain the numbers in that test, you're only ever going to see dual reads and writes. Which could marginally reduce the response time in preparation sequences and under sustained loads when nothing else is limiting speed (see the min fps column).

 

The largest benefit is for IGP. Not sure what you're going for Kallogan? It has been known for a long time that dual channel will help performance 10-15% at best with specialized apps or specific tasks, usually to do with just number crunching like encoding, compiling, etc.

Single stick won't affect battery life much either, especially at idle where the sticks consume less than 1W. I'll take my 16GB at dual channel and spend an extra 5 minutes less of battery for the more RAM that is more useful to me. If 8GB is enough for you, then sure thing, go for a single stick.

Fast RAM, like 2133MHz+ can make a noticeable difference in system responsiveness over DDR3 1600, whether dual or single channel.

 

Sorry if i'm a litlle provocative, it's just i'm tired of hearing bullsh*ts and marketing scams about ram. Dual channel existed now for years, not to mention triple channel failure, and still didn't demonstrate any substantial improvements if not for marginal exceptions.

I myself tried 4GB vs 2x4GB in many games and it didn't bring the slightest improvement framerate wise and barely 30 pts in 3dmark.

Now i'm aware that we'll enter in a serious igp era with broadwell and Kaveri where ram will probably matters more. Well i'm not even sure since they tend to put dedicated ram on die now. If ram is cheap no problem but if not, prepare to pay for the high frequencies ram race to boost ur igp

And 5-10% on 5 hours battery life is 15-30 minutes more for my case. So for 10 hours...