dual channel vs single channel non-gaming

[Beeblequix]

mobo: MSI RS482M4-ILD with Radeon Express 200 chipset

question: in a non-gaming scenario, what is the actual difference in performance between 1x512MB DDR400 & 2x256 DDR400? Anyone know of any published benchmarks (ie Anand's, Tom's, Xbitlabs, etc...) describing the benefit to non-gamers of dual channel memory?

ß

[Steve R Jones]

I'm sure most human beings couldn't tell the difference if they had too.

AMD's don't benefit from dual channel as much as Intel chips do.

[AllGamer]

you wont see the difference

it's only in the number in benchmarks

[RamonGTP]

I can't COMPLETELY agree with the "you won't notice the difference" claim, and here is why... I run a 64 player BF2 server powered by an A64 3200+ and 2x512MB of ram. When the server was full, my cpu usage would range from 80-90% One day I went to my data center where the server is located for some routine maintainance on the machines there. I removed the cover of my game server and noticed I had not placed my two ram sticks in the correct slots, it was actually operating in single channel mode. I fixed it to run in dual channel and my CPU usage when the server is full has dropped by about 10%

The extra CPU cycles I freed up by making that change now allow me to RDP into my server from home while its full and it does not effect gamers on the other side, the RDP logon is seemless, where as prior to the configuration change, RDPing into the server would cause some momentary lag on the players end.

In MOST scenario's you will not notice the difference, but it really comes down to what you are doing with the machine.