RAM Questions

[Halcyon]

Hi, I'm looking at getting a 15.6" Vortex IV laptop and have a couple of quick questions about the RAM cards available.

The configurator gives a choice of either a Samsung 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 card/s or a Kingston Hyper-X Genesis 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 card/s. Both appear to be similar, so I wanted to ask for opinions. Would anyone recommend one model over the other?

Also, are there any notable differences between using two 4GB cards, and a using single 8GB card? (Besides using two slots instead of one.)

 

[keynes]

Any ram will be fine and there is no noticeable difference between 1x8gb and 2x4gb

 

[PLAYDODGY]

Under optimal conditions, dual channel operation delivers twice as much memory bandwidth as single channel. Since the memory channels are interleaved, it also reduces latency for large sets of data. Ergo, it improves performance by up to 100%

 

[steaky360]

Under optimal conditions, dual channel operation delivers twice as much memory bandwidth as single channel. Since the memory channels are interleaved, it also reduces latency for large sets of data. Ergo, it improves performance by up to 100%

Theoretically and/or perhaps for certain applications. For most purposes there will be little/no noticeable improvement with modern ram. At least that's in my experience

 

[keynes]

Under optimal conditions,

What sort of optimal conditions? And in which applications you will see a 100% increase in performance?

 

[PLAYDODGY]

Optimal relate to compatability with other hardware options within the system.system settings , etc.
100% I meant can see up to 100% in certain apps not is sorry , typo.
And yes is synthetic benchmark,(hey if dual channel wasn't quicker than single there would be know benefit in having it )
simple way is two lane road will move twice as much traffic in theory than a single lane road, in layman terms lol.
correct me if I am wrong , I don't know a lot, about from what I read and see about certain things, so I could be wrong.

 

[keynes]

I am just curious. What exact applications will benefit and by how much? I don't think the two lane road example is applicable for this case.

 

[PLAYDODGY]

synthetic bench of sysoft Sandra show a 70% increase.
30% increase in bandwidth, as apposed to single.
divx and xvid only show %5 increase.
WinRAR 20% increase in compression speed.
Gaming only showed 15% increase in performance with intel cpu, although not tested with amd system.
of which the above findings couldchange for better or worse ?
mainly video editing and photo shop apps are the only things I can say that would benefit to using dual channel setup, as of the memory bandwidth increase.

 

[keynes]

The gaming results seems interesting, I would never have expected such a rise in performance gaming wise. Could you post your source please?

 

[steaky360]

From what I've read its nothing like that much of an increase for most folk especially during gaming. Maybe 5% at best from what I've read. However its all a bit of a moot point really, its like saying that faster ram gives you more performance, yeah.. ok.. but its not a big increase for most uses.

 

[PLAYDODGY]

lol faster ram doesn't give much more performance ,1333mhz low cas v 2100mhx 11 cas the 2100 only shows 1.5 % increase in performance

 

[PLAYDODGY]

give ten minutes have to look into my offline saved stuff
ok had a look , jesus its an old 2007 article from when ddr2 dual channel hit the market,, so what I stated above for the ddr3 mem , doesn't really stand, from the old article I remembered, . might have to research this and see if it does make any difference.( and if not throw my hands in the air and say , yep was wrong)

The gaming results seems interesting, I would never have expected such a rise in performance gaming wise. Could you post your source please?

 

[mantadog]

I have never seen any benchmarks that ever showed anything like a 70% boost from running in dual channel, not even synthetic. The thing about running in dual channel is you have a theoretical doubling of bandwidth but will be lucky to see a 10% benchmark improvement and <1% in real life, which is not going to be noticeable.

DDR3 is more than fast enough to cope with all the data the CPU needs even in single channel, at least in the real world. Yes dual channel is faster, I never hide the fact I will buy 2x4 sticks over 1x8 stick every day of the week because in theory its faster, but also because I will still have some RAM if 1 stick dies... But when people go throwing about 15% gaming improvement benchmarks without links, its just blatantly not true.

 

[PLAYDODGY]

like I said it was an old add and was ddr2 not 3 ,but there are so many ram variants , it all up in the air really isn't, it ram speed ram timings cpu, motherboard config, plus gfx cards etc, what drivers u using, cas latency etc, I suppose we could all draw our own conclusion , and they would be different, and none the same.
Think it would just come down to the buyers personal preference.
Then when u throw in the amd system that all changes again , with there own radeon memory as well.
I suppose to get a definitive answer you would have to go in depth into the question, you have to ask yourself , for what percentage increase you may get would it be worth going into .

 

[PLAYDODGY]

I must say I do enjoy reading and replying to everybody elses opinions and thoughts , keeps me busy and I ebjoy it, ps . sorry to anyone if I am a little bit blunt sometimes with stuff I don't mean to offend,.

 

[mantadog]

For what it's worth I don't see much evidence that ddr2 had any similar performance improvements. here is my link... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PARALLEL-PROCESSING,1705-12.html

The SiSoft Sandra benchmark does show a 10% boost but that is really the only significant improvement, anyway I doesn't really matter that much. Just try to remember people could read your posts, be taken in then disappointed when the said performance does not materialise.

 

[PLAYDODGY]

Yes you are correct, I suppose this shows the diversity of both ends of the stick,good forum posting though.

For what it's worth I don't see much evidence that ddr2 had any similar performance improvements. here is my link... http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/PARALLEL-PROCESSING,1705-12.html

The SiSoft Sandra benchmark does show a 10% boost but that is really the only significant improvement, anyway I doesn't really matter that much. Just try to remember people could read your posts, be taken in then disappointed when the said performance does not materialise.

 

[Halcyon]

Mantadog's approach seems sensible to me. Even if speed gains are small-to-negligible, it would be reassuring to use a pair of RAM cards so there is a sort of fail-safe in case one of them dies. Not to mention that it would be cheaper to replace a 4GB card than a 8GB card. (Assuming the 4GB pair don't both fail at the same time.)

So, I'll probably choose the 2x4GB Kingston cards over 1x8GB Samsung card. I don't anticipate needing more RAM, but the Vortex IV apparently has 4 slots so there will still be space if I decide I need more in the future.

Thanks for the help everyone ^^