I was wondering how the CPU is using memory banks and stick from another point of view.
For example if i have 4 stick of 16 GB of RAM (a total of 64 GB of RAM) and windows is using only 6 GB RAM does only 1 stick of RAM is used and others are in an idle state.
OR every memory stick is used and data is spread around all memory sticks and banks.
In: 0
The physical part is less important that the connections between the RAM and the CPU.
The computer talks to the ram in memory channels and each channel can have one or more ram sticks connected to it.
Since the CPU can talk on different channels at the same time, ideally all the memory reads and writes would be spread out among all the channels equally.
This of course require that each channel has ram in it and that under best circumstances all channel have the same amount of RAM in them.
This is the reason why on many motherboards you get some sort of indication which sockets to populate first and in which order.
This is all relatively simple in small boards which only 2 or 4 sockets, but can get complicated quite fast if you have a big sever based workstation with two CPU with 24 or 32 sockets spread out between 3 or 4 or 8 memory channels per CPU.
Luckily if you set thins up right the computer will use what it has automatically as efficiently a possible without you having to worry about optimizing where it puts what into memory. (We are no longer in the days of “Mel the real Programmer”)
Latest Answers