I recently found out that I had my 2 RAM sticks in apparently a ‘wrong position’ (side-by-side).
Someone pointed out that they needed to be placed in alternate slots.
I read my motherboard manual, I tried doing as much research as possible about this but all I got from that is that the alternate placement puts the RAM in ‘dual-channel’ mode and is somehow better.
I haven’t got any clear-cut/simple explanations as to WHAT ‘dual-channel memory’ means or WHY it’s better.
Someone please ELI5.
In: Technology
Just circuitry and the way they always wire dual channel memory slots. Think of each channel of memory access being the connection to each set of banks/slots. So channel 1 = slots 1 and 2, channel 2 = slots 3 and 4.
If you put two 4 GB sticks in slots 1 and 2, both are being accessed via a single 64 bit channel.
If you put one each in slots 1 and 3, you have a dedicated 64 bit channel for EACH 4 GB ram module.
In theory (depending on what manufacturer’s benchmark report you read) dual channel RAM should give you a 10-15% improvement in memory access, but in practice (and due to a lot of other factors that make it hard to isolate) you get about 5-10% increase by utilizing dual channel.
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