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    Fundamental How-Does-RAM-Work question

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by XPForever, Apr 1, 2012.

  1. XPForever

    XPForever Notebook Guru

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    Well, I was wondering something when my computer was using 5GB of RAM, the highest ive ever seen it using, during installation of NFS: The Run...

    Does RAM fill up like a ship's ballast tank system; one fills, then a door to another opens, and that fills... etc?

    Or does the data go to each of the sticks equally?

    It seems like the latter would be more efficient...
     
    XPForever, Apr 1, 2012
    #1
  2. Qing Dao

    Qing Dao Notebook Deity

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    Very simple. It goes to the sticks equally.
     
    Qing Dao, Apr 1, 2012
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  3. Rishwin

    Rishwin Notebook Deity

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    Dual and triple channel are faster because they write it across all channels (sticks) rather than just 1 at a time.
     
    Rishwin, Apr 1, 2012
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  4. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Notebook Virtuoso

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    It's really really barely faster to use both at once. But, yes, that's how it does it.
     
    Hungry Man, Apr 1, 2012
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  5. XPForever

    XPForever Notebook Guru

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    Very interesting, so that's what dual and triple channel mean.

    Thanks, clear something up.

    Learn something new about computers everyday =P
     
    XPForever, Apr 1, 2012
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  6. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Dual channel, is like SLI video cards where it distributes the load between two channels. One channel to each stick of RAM. Triple channel is just data sent through three channels to three sticks of RAM.

    Of course if you have four RAM sticks in dual channel, it will split one channel between two ram sticks, and the other channel to the other ram sticks. Benchmarking there is about a 5-10% improvement, but in reality it isn't really noticeable. Where you will notice it is with an integrated GPU (graphics on the CPU chip) that uses the system RAM to process the graphics.
     
    HTWingNut, Apr 1, 2012
    #6