Is Triple Channel better for TS2010?

[KleinArt]

This question is about Windows 7 - 64 bit and RAM memory. Is really better Triple Channel for running TS2010 or is nearly the same with DDR3 Dual Channel?

 

[lokos]

Triple channel memory will give you almost no difference in application performance.

The difference between even single channel and triple channel at most is about 2%, in the most extreme difference.

The difference between dual channel and triple channel is roughly less than 1%.

 

[johnwhelan]

This question is about Windows 7 - 64 bit and RAM memory. Is really better Triple Channel for running TS2010 or is nearly the same with DDR3 Dual Channel?

Short answer yes.

Long answer conventional memory needs to be refreshed, by placing it in banks you can refresh cycle one bank whilst reading or writing from the other so dual channel comes close to doubling the effective memory bandwidth. Triple channel works along the same lines.

dual channel

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ddr2-ram-memory,2079-6.html

Triple channel

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/triple-channel-ddr3-i7,2128-9.html

not quite an apples to apples comparison but the general idea is there. The i7 cpu helps as well. Have a dig on Tomshardware.com.

Triple Channel works its magic for any for any version of Trainz including TRS2004. TS2009 and TS2010 can access up to 4 gigs of memory rather than 2 gigs under a 64 bit operating system no matter which type of memory is used.

Cheerio John

 

[lokos]

In theory yes but in a real world situation the extra bandwidth is almost never used and no appreciatable benefit can be measured.

Overclocking to gain benefits is a whole different ball game.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-13.html

 

[KleinArt]

And what about DDR2 Dual Channel?

Ok. And now what can we say about the comparison between DDR3 Triple Channel and DDR2 Dual Channel?

Thanks for all the answers.

Greetings.

John Charles.

 

[johnwhelan]

In theory yes but in a real world situation the extra bandwidth is almost never used and no appreciatable benefit can be measured.

Overclocking to gain benefits is a whole different ball game.


http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-13.html

Interesting, the review is about a year old and I couldn't see which version of Windows they were running, I suspect 32 bit Vista. Essentially they are saying because of the caches on the i7 the cpu can be kept fed. I suspect that the more memory the program is using the more important triple channel becomes as the caches become swamped.

One of those cases where to find out the truth you would need to set up your own benchmark running 64 bit Win 7 and a large complex Trainz layout in TS2010 which isn't out yet.

From a buying decision though I think the answer is triple channel will provide the most memory throughput and Trainz on large layouts is probably fairly memory intensive, however dual channel may provide sufficient throughput. If you get it wrong its an expensive mistake.

Cheerio John