mobile processor single/dual channel RAM

Erchz

Reputable
Mar 6, 2015
4
0
4,510
There is plenty of information (and misinformation) about the dual vs single channel RAM topic, as in some performance gains for specific cases but to put my question in context, I'm planning on buying an ultrabook and the main difference between my two options is the fact that one has single channel RAM and the other one uses dual channel (its also thicker of course).

I will run A LOT of virtualization tasks (virtualbox/vmware) and when the balance was almost tipping to the dual channel side, I read mobile processors aren't really capable of obtaining any performance gains of dual channel configurations, despite the source not being very reliable, it planted the seed of doubt on me specially because i couldnt find further information.

Also, there is no dedicated graphics card, so the integrated chip will be used, but I will not run gpu-intensive tasks unless having a windowed virtual machine counts as it.

Long story short:

I will use a lot of virtual OS and compile code on a laptop (never more than two at the same time), do I need dual channel RAM or laptops/virtualization dont get any performance gain?

Side note: Is it worth it spending 100 extra € for an i7 5500U cpu instead of i5 5200U?
 

OrackBobama

Reputable
Mar 8, 2015
50
0
4,660
No, there won't be a massive performance gain from getting a dual channel laptop. The performance increase is pretty minimal, and having 2 channels of memory wont really help. The i7 probably would help your cause.

In short, don't bother. If you can get a thinner one with single channel memory, it should be alright. Make sure it has at least 8 gb though.
 

TRENDING THREADS