Dual Channel Vs. Single Memory Configuration

You often see it in marketing materials: DDRII. A lot of laptop and desktop manufacturers seem to flaunt dual channel DRAM these days. But what does it really mean? Should we succumb to marketing hype?

Theoretically, a dual channel configuration will reduce bottlenecks in processing since it will double the amount of available memory bandwidth. Instead of simply having a single channel through which data passes, a second parallel channel is opened. With these working simultaneously, the bottleneck problem is solved. However, in most real world applications (like productivity/office and even some gaming applications), this might not be such an issue.

Here’s a review on associatedcontent.com, where the author did some benchmarking between using a single 1 GB chip versus two 512 MB chips in dual channel configuration. The conclusion: the difference is negligible.

As you can see from the charts that the differences are there but they are not that earth shattering. The trend for the memory tests show the dual channel memory modules does make a difference between one single memory module and two in the dual channel sockets of the motherboard. The PCMark05 tests show not much of a difference in the total score between one set of memory modules or even the difference between the 1 gigabyte and 512 megabyte tests.

The biggest differences are the dual channel with two memory sticks but they do not necessarily need to be from the same company as the results of the two memory modules from separate companies show. In the PCMark05 tests the best scores came from the two memory modules regardless of brand. The one gigabyte of Crucial memory did do a little better than the single modules of 512MB memory but this test does not really measure the added memory just the performance of the memory.

So next time, be careful about the marketing hype. If you think you really need a dual channel configuration, you’re probably doing some high end gaming or video processing. Otherwise, single channel should suffice.