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Benefits of Dual-Channel Memory in Laptops Explored

Dual-Channel Memory Improves Laptop's Speed

by Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 11/21/2005 | 09:05 AM ]

Dual-channel memory has become a standard feature on desktop personal computers (PCs): some five or six years ago dual-channel RDRAM was supported only by high performance chipsets aimed at server, workstations and gaming PCs, but with availability of Intel 965-series and NVIDIA nForce-series products broader audiences could enjoy benefits associated with high memory bandwidth.

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Today market growth for mobile PCs outpaces that of desktop computers, thus, hardware designers spend more money on research and development (R&D) of mobile PC components than before. Due to continuous search of performance increases, mobile chipsets with dual-channel memory support emerged earlier this year and it seems that soon they will become standard. But how much impact does a dual-channel memory bring when it comes to performance of mobile computers?

UK Gamer has run two benchmarks on a system that supported both single- and dual-channel memory configurations and found that there is a slight performance impact. the impact on overall performance of a notebook that dual-channel memory brings.

“If you buy a laptop that comes built around a chipset capable of dual-channel memory support and it’s a equipped with just a single memory module, then you’re not getting the performance it’s capable of. I’m not talking a doubling of performance with 3DMark showing an increase of around 16%. Nevertheless it’s a an increase I quite like having, particularly coupled to the fact that in most normal cases it would also result in increased memory capacity too. One of the rare win-win situations in computing,” concludes UK Gamer.

The author carried out his research on Acer Aspire 1691 laptop with 15” screen which is based on Intel 915M chipset enabled with support of dual-channel DDR2 memory, may be equipped with Intel Pentium M processors with 533MHz processor system bus and comes with MOBILITY ATI RADEON X700-series graphics adapter.