2 Gig of RAM too much?

[B.Ob.]

2GB of RAM: Do We Really Need That Much?

 

"...1GB memory modules used to be pretty rare and cost quite a bit of money until recently. However, the situation has changed lately, as the memory chips needed for 1GB memory modules production became wider available. As a result, there appeared some pretty fast overclocker’s DDR SDRAM modules with 1GB capacity in the market. Unfortunately, they cannot boast the same characteristics as 512MB solutions most popular among computer enthusiasts. Of course, you can equip your system with 2GB of memory by installing 4 x512MB modules. However, this solution will always work slower than a system equipped with a pair of 1GB memory DIMMs (this is primarily true for Athlon 64 systems, but also works for Pentium 4 based platforms in many cases). Moreover, a solution like that would be less economical. Anyway, all these statements need to be proven by practical tests, so let’s pass straight to the tests then."

 

They do many tests with 2 512, 4 512 and 2 1Gig sticks. Interesting stuff!!!

[ParoxysM]

Some teenager posted something similiar in [H]ard forums with tons of cfgs...he must've rebooted 1000x, lol.

[PurSuiT]

I have known almost 6 months now, that matching 1Gb sticks was better.

[ParoxysM]

Timings get messed up when going 4x512MB rather than 2x1G

[Sacred]

not if you buy the same ram with same timing. The performance loss with 4--512 sticks is about 3 to 5% only way to see that difference is when benchmarking. You will not notice a 3 to 5% loss in performance while gaming.