Dual Memory Architecture...worth it in a business environment?

[ridergroov]

Hey folks. I'm getting ready to do a few RAM upgrades at work and some
of the PCs have dual banks with 256 made up of 2 x128 sticks. My goal
is to get them up to 512 but i'm wondering if I should just buy 1 stick
of 256 for the upgrade which would bring the speed down to single
memory speeds but also if we want to upgrade again, I won't be pulling
sticks out that are ultimately wastes because I don't have anyway to
put them on the next upgrade. Is the dual memory architecture worth it
in a business environment where most people are doing word processing
stuff?

 

[Mike T.]

Hey folks. I'm getting ready to do a few RAM upgrades at work and some
of the PCs have dual banks with 256 made up of 2 x128 sticks. My goal
is to get them up to 512 but i'm wondering if I should just buy 1 stick
of 256 for the upgrade which would bring the speed down to single
memory speeds but also if we want to upgrade again, I won't be pulling
sticks out that are ultimately wastes because I don't have anyway to
put them on the next upgrade. Is the dual memory architecture worth it
in a business environment where most people are doing word processing
stuff?

Actually, it would be better to buy one stick of 512, and throw away the 128
sticks, or use ONE of them. -Dave

 

[Paul]

Hey folks. I'm getting ready to do a few RAM upgrades at work and some
of the PCs have dual banks with 256 made up of 2 x128 sticks. My goal
is to get them up to 512 but i'm wondering if I should just buy 1 stick
of 256 for the upgrade which would bring the speed down to single
memory speeds but also if we want to upgrade again, I won't be pulling
sticks out that are ultimately wastes because I don't have anyway to
put them on the next upgrade. Is the dual memory architecture worth it
in a business environment where most people are doing word processing
stuff?

The main thing in a upgrade, is that the users don't notice
what you've done On systems that have integrated graphics
and no separate video card, there is a slight difference in
graphics update performance, between a single channel and a
dual channel memory configuration. (In fact, on an 865GE based
system, I could tell the machine had single channel, just from
working on it, without opening it up or using a utility to
check.) If the computers have separate video cards, then that
aspect is less of an issue.

In terms of benchmarks, you can see some results here, between
single and dual channel. While the source of the info is not
unbiased, you can see there would be somewhere around a 7% to
11% difference in application performance (figure 3).

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/Dual_DDR_SB.pdf

So if the machines had dual channel previously, install dual
channel again, for fewest complaints about the "upgrade"

Paul

 

[Terry]

Hey folks. I'm getting ready to do a few RAM upgrades at work and some
of the PCs have dual banks with 256 made up of 2 x128 sticks. My goal
is to get them up to 512 but i'm wondering if I should just buy 1 stick
of 256 for the upgrade which would bring the speed down to single
memory speeds but also if we want to upgrade again, I won't be pulling
sticks out that are ultimately wastes because I don't have anyway to
put them on the next upgrade. Is the dual memory architecture worth it
in a business environment where most people are doing word processing
stuff?

No.

If the processors and motherboard are modern enough so that they
support dual memory channel architecture, then you won't notice any
speed difference doing word processing, email, browsing, etc.

Also, if you're running Win2K or WinXP, and your users every have more
than one application open at the same time, they will notice speed
improvements from moving from 256 to 512, that will exceed any small
decrease in performace from moving from dual to single architecture.

My $.02

Terry