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
The way that multiple memory modules works is that all the modules are connected to the same wires. So when the memory controller sends a command it goes to every memory module at once. The only difference is a few wires which is used to select which module should receive the command. This way you only need about 300 wires to connect all your memory to the memory controller on your processor. The problem being that the memory controller can only access one module at a time which reduces the bandwidth. So instead of just using one channel of about 300 wires the memory controller will use two channels of a total of 600 wires. Each channel will be connected to a different set of memory slots, typically placed on each side of the processor socket or at lest distanced a bit apart to allow all the wires to route through. This allow you to get double the bandwidth between your memory and the processor but still gives you the ability to have multiple memory modules per channel to increase capacity.
Latest Answers