Hardware Is dual channel RAM better?

[fossda]

In my PC build, I currently have 1 stick of 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM. If I bought an identical RAM stick and put it in my computer, would I get better performance because it's dual channel?

 

[mgrev]

yes it's a little bit faster, but only 5-10%

 

[mightymuffy]

Well, yeah, coz then you'd have 16GB....
Seriously though, yes 2x8Gb would be faster than 1x16, but not by much....
EDIT: Ninja'd again! Yep I'd say mgrev is about right there

 

[guitarheroknight]

It depends, if you're using it for gaming with a physical GPU then no, you're probably get a 1 fps boost at most.

If you don't have a gpu and have integrated graphics then it will give you a very nice bump in performance.

 

[fossda]

I have a dedicated GPU... so there'd be hardly any difference at all?

 

[omegasoul6]

I have a dedicated GPU... so there'd be hardly any difference at all?

If you multitask, you will notice a relatively big difference in performance, especially if you run Chrome, that browser eats ram.

The only game I can think of at the moment that runs slow without 16gb of ram is Batman Arkham Knight.

 

[guitarheroknight]

I have a dedicated GPU... so there'd be hardly any difference at all?

In gaming you won't see any improvements.

 

[raystriker]

I read somewhere that dual channel ram increases the speed but the available memory decreases by just a bit(almost negligible)

 

[Joe88]

technically it's better in dual channel, however if you actually notice this improvement is another thing

 

[codezer0]

yes it's a little bit faster, but only 5-10%

It was only about that fast on the nForce2, back in the 90's, because it was connected to a CPU that was only made for single-channel DDR RAM with the original AMD Athlon.

Nowadays, with CPU's made and intended to run with such an amount of bandwidth, the gains are more significant. I certainly would not even dream of trying to run a Skylake on single-channel mode. If you have to do that, it's more likely a defective motherboard or CPU.

The X99-based i7's practically could even go quad-channel, with most motherboards for that style of chip having eight RAM slots.