Assuming all the sticks were the exact same thing, would it be 'better' to have 2 sticks of 8GB, or 4 sticks of 4GB? Obviously these are running dual mode in both examples. My brain-gut tells me that prob 4x4GB is better for some reason, but I'm curious to know which is truly correct, and more importantly WHY.
2X8Gb = room for expansion
Read this, too - the principles apply to your question:
Gamers, mainstream users, and office users shouldn't care. Actually, at the end of the day, the same rule applies to everyone, simulation pro or not: It's density and frequency that matters, not channeling. Quad- and better channels theoretically have a more profound impact, but this is in-step with the increased density of kits that are targeted for quad-channel platforms. If you want to push speed, density and frequency should be at the top of your list. Generally, when you're spending that kind of money, you're going with a multi-channel kit of two or more anyway, but the point still stands.
Not what I'm asking. Talking performance wise. Pretend I asked should you get 2x16GB or 4x8GB if you want.
Read this, too - the principles apply to your question:
I understand this. But again, pretend I have really awesome RAM - and had the choice between 2 sticks or 4, which setup would deliver better performance is my question. Maybe the answer is "they'd be the same," but I'm curious.
The part you didn't bold
Quad- and better channels theoretically have a more profound impact, but this is in-step with the increased density of kits that are targeted for quad-channel platforms.
Read this, too - the principles apply to your question:
I understand this. But again, pretend I have really awesome RAM - and had the choice between 2 sticks or 4, which setup would deliver better performance is my question. Maybe the answer is "they'd be the same," but I'm curious.
The part you didn't bold
Quad- and better channels theoretically have a more profound impact, but this is in-step with the increased density of kits that are targeted for quad-channel platforms.
is more in reference to my question, I think.
That article answers your questions, but basically it comes down to "what does your motherboard do"? If your motherboard supports increased bandwidth from quad channel vs dual channel, than quad channel may be worth doing. That said, those boosts are very, very minimal and I'd personally rather have the room to add more RAM later.
There is a small performance gain if you run in quad channel mode but you will only really notice it in benchmarks and programs that can actually take advantage of it, which aren't many... gaming not included. So feel free to just go with 8 GB if you want.
that last quote makes sense. It's basically like spending the money on an i7 instead of the 4690k and seeing performance in numbers rather than actually applied to gaming results. Thanks man!
But seriously, yeah that answers my question. There is *some* performance boost to running quad-chan, which my Z97 doesn't do anyway, so would literally just be 2 sets of DIMMS in dual-chan. But that performance boost doesn't actually equal any applied benefit to gaming, so IDGAF.
noiseredux wrote:that last quote makes sense. It's basically like spending the money on an i7 instead of the 4690k and seeing performance in numbers rather than actually applied to gaming results. Thanks man!
it felt a little bit like I was leading you in a dance. A beautiful, graceful dance.
If I recall correctly, we determined that I had just spent more than you for very minimal performance gains in just a handful of circumstances (including some gaming contexts), not that my CPU was inferior in any way. Plus, I get the benefits of having a faster processor outside of gaming applications.
the way I remember it was that we said that you spent about a $100 more than me to get the same gaming performance, since we could find no real world examples of any games that would benefit from an i7 over a 4690.
I did concede that you'd have benefits in non-gaming performance, assuming you're using this PC to edit big chunks of video files or something.
noiseredux wrote:the way I remember it was that we said that you spent about a $100 more than me to get the same gaming performance, since we could find no real world examples of any games that would benefit from an i7 over a 4690.
I did concede that you'd have benefits in non-gaming performance, assuming you're using this PC to edit big chunks of video files or something.
as a common courtesy, I read through both links you posted. What I see is benchmark numbers that that look good on "paper," but don't actually cite any real world examples of specific games that benefit from the i7. Like I said above. You can point to someone saying that you can get an extra 2-3 FPS out of the i7... which I'm not sure the human eye would be able to detect.
