[mythtv-users] Is interleaving memory still the best bet for an Atom?

[Matt Emmott]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:

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