Performance of Multiple RAM Sticks Compared to Single Sticks

Question

It's no secret that using two physical drives gives better performance than two partitions on the same physical drive; because there are two devices, they each have their own platters, head, caches, controllers, etc. (eventual system bottlenecks and such aside).

I'm wondering if the same thing is true of RAM. That is, for example (other factors such as speeds, timings, etc. being equal), would installing two 1GB sticks of RAM give better performance than one 2GB stick?

I can't find any useful information on any tests, analyses, or comparisons on this subject. There's plenty of people asking it, but no definitive answers, just speculation.

For the record, I'm not concerned about "one stick allows for future upgrades" or single vs. dual channel (this can be dealt away with by for example doubling everything—in my particular case, I'm trying to determine whether two 1GB sticks is better than four 512MB sticks or vice-versa).

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Even if you're not concerned about future upgrades, get the 2 x 1GB sticks. If nothing else, it's fewer points of failure. The speed difference between 4 x 512 and 2 x 1024 is negligible if they're running at the same clock speed and voltage.

It's an academic question anyway, since you won't notice the difference as an end-user. The bottleneck on your system is still the hard drive, whether mechanical or SSD.

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EDIT:

I've been told that fewer sticks will be quicker, because of the density of the chips on each stick means less travel on the bus than with more sticks. Apparently the timings on 512s are slower than 1GBs too.

Answer 2

Spend another $50 and max out the board, eliminating obessions of minutia and getting on with the more pressing business, allthewhile acknowledging that splitting hairs of minutia helps make the world go 'round. My $.02 anywho.......