1dimm vs 2dimm

[death_relic0]

ok so ive heard that its better to have 1 dimm rather than 2 dimm's when it comes to ram (keeping the total memory same). but that just seems false to me.. any ways, so is it better to have one 2gb dimm of ram or 2 1gb dimm of ram? im speaking in terms of performance.

 

[badge]

Dual channel mode which incereases memory bandwidth requires two DIMMs. If a MB does not support dual channel mode, then one DIMM of the larger capacity requires less power than two DIMMs.

 

[death_relic0]

so how big of a performance difference is there? i searched google but couldnt really find any charts that indicate the performance difference.. if u have a link , please share it.

 

[sminlal]

If you have a motherboard that uses a dual channel memory controller, then two 1GB DIMMs will give you better performance than one 2GB DIMM (assuming the DIMMs have the same performance specs). The reason for this is that the two-channel controller can read or write two DIMMs in parallel, much like a road with two traffic lanes in each direction can handle twice as many cars.

That having been said, because of CPU caches the overall performance of the system is not very dependent on RAM speeds and you probably won't notice any difference at all unless you run benchmarks.