RAM Benchmark: Dual-Channel vs. Single-Channel - Does it Matter?

This video aged like milk.

that picture of ocz ram in the diagrams takes me back, a lot of my old builds had ocz ddr2 and 3

This was fantastic

I broke my ryzen GPU pin so now i will be running on single Chanel for now :/

YES!!!

I don't know if this makes sense, but does using dual channel become more important when using an ageing PC in 2021?

For example, one of the PCs I have, has an I3-3250, GTX 750Ti and 2x 4GBs 1600Mhz DDR3, SSD etc.

What I mean is, as this is an ageing PC with less CPU cores, does it not benefit from the use of RAM in dual channel mode as it inevitable has to work harder to keep up with today's software? Older PCs have to use every advantage they have right?

Would love to see a revisit on something like this.

I have a friend who has been having some issues with his computer, he has 2 sticks of ram with different brands, different capacity, (probably) different timings, but the same advertised frequency. My hunch is that it's related to the mixed ram.

all these years later, THEY'RE STILL PUTTING 1 STICK OF RAM

i could not find result in ur article . is that removed?

Here in 2021 your video helped me alot

Perhaps people confuse single/dual-rank RAM vs single-dual channel architecture.

nice

To all of you watching this in 2020: This 6 year old video is no longer relevant, and needs to be updated. DDR4 wasn't even out yet.

thankyou you did a great job ,clearing a big doubt of mine

pretty sure that's pronounced U ler

Imagine coming in 2020

2020 .. Steve now does not panda to idiots lol.

I'm trying to make an old laptop work better. I already have a single spare stick of ram and it currently has a Dual Channel RAM configuration. Is 2x2GB DDR3 PC3-10600 CL9 SODIMM Dual Channel Ram configuration or 8GB DDR3L PC3-12800 CL11 SODIMM RAM Single Channel Ram Configuration better?

Can you redo this video for today's PCs ?
- need this for premiere work, need 32GB from 16GB and want to know if dual channel really helps all that much vs Quad in today's boards (I have a B450 MSI Gaming Carbon with R9 3900)

I'm coming back to this video ever since I watched it when it came out first and I was 14 years old. :') thanks Steve. You've been bringing us quality content long before tech Jesus followed suit

This should be refreshed, with ryzen and stuff ?

And if anyone was curious....yes quad channel ram is twice the speed a dual and gives even faster access to the CPU. All of those non engineer's out there cough cough gamers will say quad channel memory does not do anything, I am just going to ignore the fact they missed every math class since the 3rd grade on and say those people are those kids who ate paint chips off the walls of their entire house. GPU causes what?? RAM and CPU usage, what happens when we are using dual channel vs quad channel then? Yes yes very good, this is the non paint chip eating class. I leave this comment due to this video being on a gaming forum talking about how quad channel ram does about 2fps difference in performance,, not my comment a quote from linus tech tips forum and several people "gamers" and not the staff of Linus Tech Tips for the record claiming this childishness insanity that takes math and says you do not exist to me anymore and facts your gone to, lets gammmmmmmmmeeeeeeeee. So if you found yourself here by means of that, quad channel is twice the speed which equals faster CPU access speed and RAM access speed which.... yes you in the front row.... YES faster access to PCI lanes your mother raised a genius give yourself a pat on the back non paint chip eating fact absorbing math using geeks that will leave those poor souls in the dust if a stand off between the dual and quad channel ram came to be. Remember I make this comment only to inform with facts from the forum that linked me here, I am sure Mr. Linus agrees with the non paint chip eaters, because the numbers agree with stated facts placed here by me, for the betterment of human kind.......the comments were so horrid I could not compose myself to not shed tears of sadness for that lost souls and their magic 2fps loss ideology. GREAT VIDEO BTW Gamers Nexus, I am not trolling you all, just compelled to make sure facts stay in the place of truth topic 778241 if anyone from this esteemed channel wishes to go fix the wrong placed upon this earth by what so lead me here.

Cool, I would love to see results vs triple or quad channel too there.

Im kinda stupid and i need a bit of help. If i will buy 2 single 16gb ram will they work in dual channel? Or i need to buy a kit 2x16gb?

How does this affect using VOIP and CHROME while gaming. Would dual channel help then?

So, I have 2x8 DDR4 and 2x4 DDR4 all 3000Mhz. Does having different sizes actually cause lower performance? I've been told by unreliable sources that it "cuts my frames in half." I've been looking around, and I cannot find anything telling me that it does...

too old

I feel like the different between dual and single isn't really being captured here.
Personally, I think the significance of the difference between the benchmarks depends on the CPU and RAM combination you have (and whether you have an SSD or Hard drive bottlenecking everything)...

A computer with a fast CPU and a slow or average DDR2 or DDR3 RAM stick would greatly benefit from a second RAM stick in Dual Channel...
Of course, a very fast DDR4 RAM with low CAS latency would probably not bottleneck CPU that much that Dual Channel makes a big different on day to day application (the storage speed would play a bigger role).

In short which is best for gaming single sided ram or double sided ram ?

2019 here

I can not found your rig setup detail, .. . I appreciate it if u would like to put it in desc. Best regard

and here i went out and got another single 16gig now i got 32 gig for the first time ever .

dualchannel on laptop i get more gaming performance around 10 percent

Yeah, are you going to start ripping those RAM chips out of your systems? Try disabling that PAGEFILE.SYS and then choke out some compression algorithm benchmarks. The software has to be able to take advantage of multiple channels. Here's one way of looking at it: multiple channels of RAM is essentially the same thing as multiple hard disk channels. Think RAID, think RAID 0. And there has to be an intermidiary juggling what goes where with regard to filling up the RAM modules with data to process verssus clubbibng one channel until it gags and a tiny bit for the second channel and its done, while channel 1 is cursor frozen choking to death on over burden. Mind you RAM is MUCH faster than a magnetic disk or SSD therefore, the human brain will notice the speed diffence in handling data when it comes to ahard disk but not quite so much with refard to RAM. Is just the way the human beings hardware is designed. Dual and quad channel arrangements will always be superior to single channel when the design and implementation of the computer hardware and the software are configured to properly manage the data. Now think JUGGLING. a 4 armed juggler will juggle faster than a 2 armed juggler but the problem is that the 4 armed juggler doesn't know how to use those extra arms since he's always had 2 arms. Until he practices more his performance will not improve even if given 8 arms to work with. Until the programmers take iito account the dual and quad channel architecture the end user will see very benefit and any that is noticed is likely by sheer accident and not design. Blame lazy programmers not wanting to do extra thought to figure out how to take advantage of additioonal memory channels... More memory channels will always be better when we get out of the stone ages of programming.... SSorry for so many typos, flubbing/floundering kyb.

Good article and video, thanks dawg!

If you use dual channel on a 4 RAM slot MOBO make sure to use slot #2 & #4 i used to use 1 & 2, now my performance increasef drasticly.

In gaming with a dedicated video card from Nvidia or AMD, the answer is likely no, since you use your video card's memory the most. But for all other applications, and for those with on-board graphics that use RAM, dual-channel RAM will make a difference. In short, any applications that use RAM the most benefit from dual- or quad-channel.

yr 2014 .. would like to see anything changed in this. becuz many saying ryzen utilizing dual memory stick configured system better and performance getting improved.

Excuse my dumb question on a really old video but I have to ask..... with ddr3, even if I have 2 sticks of ram installed that's still a single channel? And if I pop in all 4 matching sticks of ram into my 4 ram slots that's duel channel correct? I'm asking bc everybody in the comments acts like if you have 2 sticks in let's say slot 0 and 2 or 1 and 3 that's duel channel but really that's still a single channel correct and duel channel would be all 4 slots? Can someone intelligent please answer this?

Can i use 1 single rank ram and another dual rank ram together

Great video. I’m watching it in 2019 and still found it very useful. Building my first rig. Thanks for being informative and to the point.

i’m from future! in the next 7 years, you guys will be able to play holographic virtual reality games same as i do!

This deserves a revisit both on the topic of modern Zen processors, and because I don't see any charting of frame times.

Shame on you Steve for not listening to (probably) future Scott Wasson.

Hey guys, I have a question:

How much FPS (average) will I get, when I will play fortnite on 720p with these specs:
GPU (+VRAM): AMD Vega 11 (2gb ram)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G (4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.9 GHz)
RAM: 1x8GB 2666 MHz
I will (i think so) also cap my fps at 60.

Bro please tell me fast which is better 8gbx1 ram at 3000mhz or 4gbx2 at 2400mhz with these ryzen 2400g

Playing in single channel is the same compare to dual channel only if we're talking about DDR3, if you test with DDR4 you'll see a totally different story

So with what you said about dual channel memory not existing and it only matters if the platform supports dual channel; does that mean getting two single sticks that are exactly the same not matter? Or is that old myth that you should buy memory paired together because they're factory tested to work better together true?