Dual vs Quad Channel Memory in gaming?

[Tech Wizard]

Hello,

 

I'm wondering how big the difference is in gaming with Dual Channel Memory vs Quad Channel Memory. Does games even benefit from quad channel, or is it only productivity applications that sees a boost?
Are we talking a few FPS, or 10+? Didn't find any gaming benchmarks for dual vs quad channel

[PCGuy_5960]

I assume that because faster memory speeds help in CPU bound scenarios, higher memory bandwidth will help as well.

[dfg666]

3 minutes ago, Tech Wizard said:

Didn't find any gaming benchmarks for dual vs quad channel

Yea because it means jack shit. You're better off investing in a better CPU/GPU or larger SSD or just save that money. If it had a significant increase in gaming performance then a lot of people would be investing in it.

[Tech Wizard]

Just now, dfg666 said:

Yea because it means jack shit. You're better off investing in a better CPU/GPU or larger SSD or just save that money.

I'm not buying. I just want to learn about the differences, if there are any.

[Alesek]

there is exactly zero difference in games...

[PCGuy_5960]

1 minute ago, dfg666 said:

Yea because it means jack shit. You're better off investing in a better CPU/GPU or larger SSD or just save that money. If it had a significant increase in gaming performance then a lot of people would be investing in it.

If you are on X99 or X79, I am pretty sure that you already have a high-ish end CPU and GPU... Quad channel is not that common because the only platforms that use it are X99 and X79

[porina]

Ram bandwidth in general (not only limited to 2 vs 4 channels) does make a difference, but usually not a big one. They way to look at it is, ram can bottleneck the CPU, in a similar way the CPU can bottleneck the GPU. It will depend on the load at the time and wont affect all scenarios. I'd love to see quad channel more mainstream as 4x slow ram will be cheaper and more compatible than 2x fast ram of the same capacity.

[Verrierr]

23 minutes ago, Tech Wizard said:

I'm not buying. I just want to learn about the differences, if there are any.

It's incremental. Up to 3% maybe.

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

we're talking less than a 2 fps difference in most scenarios 

[TheDane]

42 minutes ago, Tech Wizard said:

Hello,

 

I'm wondering how big the difference is in gaming with Dual Channel Memory vs Quad Channel Memory. Does games even benefit from quad channel, or is it only productivity applications that sees a boost?
Are we talking a few FPS, or 10+? Didn't find any gaming benchmarks for dual vs quad channel

 

Guys, there is almost no difference between dual or quad channel... BUT there is a huge difference in performance when using dual channel over single channel. There are many videos out there showing this to be true

 

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

1 minute ago, TheDane said:

Guys, there is almost no difference between dual or quad channel... BUT there is a huge difference in performance when using dual channel over single channel. There are many videos out there showing this to be true

 

can you show said videos?

[TheDane]

can you show said videos?

Here:

Here is an article regarding the topic:

http://nucblog.net/2015/09/dual-channel-vs-single-channel-does-it-matter/

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

5 minutes ago, TheDane said:

Here:

Here is an article regarding the topic:

http://nucblog.net/2015/09/dual-channel-vs-single-channel-does-it-matter/

that video showed there was pretty much no difference between the single and dual channel the in the video editing related stuff it was less then a 10 second change and in the game benchmarks there was less than a 2 fps difference 

[TheDane]

5 minutes ago, Alaradia said:

that video showed there was pretty much no difference between the single and dual channel the in the video editing related stuff it was less then a 10 second change and in the game benchmarks there was less than a 2 fps difference 

 

 

 

Little difference is still a difference.... and saving 10 seconds everytime you encode or process something will mean something after some time, and since a dual stick kit is about the same price as a single stick of the same capacity than it is just stupid not to get dual over single channel, but getting quad over dual is really only to get more GB of ram in your system

[PeachyUwUSenpai]

most people don't encode also most of the time by going dual channel your sacrificing a lane you could put a 16 gig stick in later unless you're already buying the biggest stick that can go in your dimm already

[typographie]

2 hours ago, Tech Wizard said:

Are we talking a few FPS, or 10+? Didn't find any gaming benchmarks for dual vs quad channel

Apparently nobody benchmarks it because we already know quad-channel memory doesn't do anything for gaming, but without any benchmarks how do we know that? That seems like a bit of circular logic to me. I've personally seen a few benchmarks of this, but they're mostly from back in 2011 when quad-channel was a new feature.

 

We know that memory frequency and latency can translate to meaningful gains in certain games, even if such games are outliers. The number of channels isn't exactly the same thing, but lots of games have very unique performance characteristics and I find it very hard to believe there is not a single game out there where you can measure some difference between dual- and quad-channel memory.

[QuinQuix]

On 5/11/2017 at 3:28 PM, typographie said:

Apparently nobody benchmarks it because we already know quad-channel memory doesn't do anything for gaming, but without any benchmarks how do we know that? That seems like a bit of circular logic to me. I've personally seen a few benchmarks of this, but they're mostly from back in 2011 when quad-channel was a new feature.

 

We know that memory frequency and latency can translate to meaningful gains in certain games, even if such games are outliers. The number of channels isn't exactly the same thing, but lots of games have very unique performance characteristics and I find it very hard to believe there is not a single game out there where you can measure some difference between dual- and quad-channel memory.

Sory for necroing, but I registered specifically to agree with you here. You're absolutely right, and I've been looking for benchmarks the same way you have (I assume you haven't found any yet as I haven't either).

In general a lot of the benchmarks are inconclusive because they're not done right. What is the use looking at scenario's that are not memory-bottlenecked and then declaring it doesn't matter? That tells you nothing. Reviewers should look at scenes where you'd expect a difference. And then, they also have to focus on the right numbers. Average fps completely obscures stutter, but it ruins your game experience. The ARMA benchmark you linked is actually very good in this respect.

 

At least the idea that RAM speed is irrelevant has died. There's some discussion on latency vs frequency, but consensus seems to be that both matter with a slight edge to frequency (super low timings eg C12 3200 is about equal to C16 3600 in fps). I discovered on reddit that single rank vs dual rank is also a thing, and that dual rank sticks supposedly are faster everything else being equal (but have more trouble clocking higher, at least on ryzen). The best ram that is still moderately affordable is something like samsung B-die G SKill TridentZ 3200 C14.

 

Gamers Nexus did a video on single vs dual channel and found that you'll get about ~ 5-10% upgrading from single to dual channel (but that's avg fps, so actual impact may be larger). PCworld did an article about dual channel to quad channel and saw no significant results (but again only looked at avg fps).

I personally do not expect that it makes ZERO difference going to quad channel. But whether it is beneficial or harmfull likely comes down to latency vs bandwith. Quad channel gives you insane theoretical bandwith, but often the amount of data the cpu needs will probably not be so large. For smaller amounts of data, latency may be where most time is lost. And quad channel has slightly more latency, so it's hard to predict.

Arma would be a very interesting benchmark in this regard. It's known (in ARMA 3) that Broadwell C (5775C) with it's L4 cache (only 128MB but that's a lot for cache) improves AVERAGE fps by up to 25%. That's an insane increase in performance. I would like to see this YAAB benchmark with the 5775C, that would be very informative.

But in conclusion -  you're 100% spot on. We do NOT have the required data to say for certain that quad channel does not help in any games. I would love if someone dit a YAAB benchmark like the article you linked for (fast) quad channel ram vs dual channel ram. And maybe also for single vs dual channel. But these are the kind of articles that may have too much of a niche following to really be worth writing for professional benchmarkers. You have to really love the tech itself to be motivated to do it.
 

[pizapower]

Fallout 4 loves fast RAM.