Ganged vs Unganged memory
I decided to dig into unganged vs ganged mode and how it affects memory performance. I've never really found anything definitive online, and it's a mixed bag when it comes to what you should or shouldn't configure. This isn't scientific testing, after all, I'm not a scientist. However, it does have some results and I have screenshots, so hopefully it answers some questions for anyone who stumbles across this blog. Here goes ...
My Specs
- CPU: AMD Phenom II X3 720 @ 3023MHz (3GHz). Just a little overclocked by 200MHz.
- RAM: 8GB DDR3 720MHz (DDR-1400). 4 sticks of 2GB, 2 are kingston, 2 are OCZ
- Video: ATI Radeon 4870 750MHz GPU | 900MHz RAM (default)
- Mobo: Asus M4A785TD-M EVO
- Windows 7 Home Premium x64
I used two programs to run the benches, RightMark Memory Analyzer version 3.75 and Passmark Performance Test and just took screens of the numbers after I ran the tests. Like I said, not very scientific.
We'll start with un-ganged.
Un-ganged results passmark test
un-ganged results with multi-thread rightmark test
And here are the ganged results.
Ganged results - passmark test
Ganged results multi-thread rightmark
As you can see, slightly better performance with "ganged". And I mean slightly. Bandwidth is a little bit higher and the passmark score is as well, but obviously un-ganged is not a huge performance hit. I did notice that Windows felt a little snappier in ganged mode, so I decided to leave it at that.
