RAM

[Jrvn]

How is a 4x2gb better than a 1x8gb, say that they are running both the same frequencies? 

[Majorllama]

Theoretically? There shouldn't really be a difference assuming your MOBO supports 4x2gb sticks. 

[RUWO_builder]

In practice,not a lot,but they have more bus and more pinns to talk throug

[Xanthe_2871]

Well with one stick of 8 GB you can add another stick of 8 GB in the future without being out anything, where as with two 4 GB sticks you'd have to replace both for the same affect... but performance wise I think they'd be about the same. 

[Prysin]

48 minutes ago, Jrvn said:

How is a 4x2gb better than a 1x8gb, say that they are running both the same frequencies? 

by having dual channel you have higher bandwidth.

 

each channel on a motherboard has 64bits of bandwidth, by having 2x4 you have 2x64= 128bit bus. Rather then 1x8 which would be 64bit bus only.

Just like on graphics cards, a wider bus allow more data to be transfered and greatly reduces bottlenecking.

[porina]

I'd always aim to add ram in the fastest supported configuration, which is two sticks at a time for dual channel systems. Why throw away that bandwidth? There are many tasks not significantly affected by ram bandwidth, but there are some which are. Especially if you have 4+ cores/threads this will be more important as time goes on.

 

Especially where the mobo has 4 slots anyway, keeping slots open for a future upgrade is a poor argument to go single stick. For some specific advanced uses, I have seen decent performance increases from using 4 modules in a dual channel system where bandwidth was limited, not ram quantity.