<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Raymond Wagner <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:raymond@wagnerrp.com">raymond@wagnerrp.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div class="im">On 1/9/2012 14:47, Matt Emmott wrote:<br>
> A friend of mine is looking into the Zotac Zbox to replace a failed<br>
> Front End. I remember reading some discussion on this list that two<br>
> RAM sticks are better than one, as the interleaving will help video<br>
> playback performance.<br>
<br>
</div>You're talking about two completely different things. A memory module<br>
is going to contain a number of banks, and each bank may be busy on some<br>
task at any given time. If a bank is busy, a different bank can be<br>
accessed in the mean time. In hard drive terminology, consider<br>
non-interleaved memory to be like a bunch of spanned drives, while<br>
interleaved memory to be like a RAID0 stripe. Better for some types of<br>
load, worse for others, but really not something you should need to be<br>
concerned about.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, one module versus two is about memory channels. Most<br>
modern systems have two channels, while higher end ones can have three<br>
or four. Two modules of DDR3-1333 on one channel will do 10GB/s,<br>
regardless of whether it is interleaved or not. Two modules on two<br>
separate channels will do 20GB/s.<br>
<br>
On older ION systems, the video chip ran off the system memory, and<br>
system memory became a real issue as some users found low speed memory<br>
would starve the decoder. On newer ION2 systems, the video chip has<br>
dedicated memory, and since the CPU itself isn't doing much of anything<br>
(and doesn't have the power even if you wanted it to), memory<br>
performance isn't that important. Of course, with memory as cheap as it<br>
is, there is no point to trying to save $10 by only getting one stick of<br>
memory.<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">_______________________________________________<br>
<br></div></div></blockquote><div>Thanks, that is helpful. And as for pricing, he got impatient and spent the extra $12 for two sticks, just in case. <br></div></div><br>