2 or 4 memory sticks???

[dlparisi]

I'm upgrading the render farm and am presented with the option of 4 sticks of 512mb or 2 sticks of 1gb (same for 4GB's). Other than future upgrade paths, is there any reason not to go with the 2 sticks (the price difference is minimal)? Will the 4 sticks render any faster, even a couple of percent? BTW: It's a dual xeon quad core if that makes a difference.

Thanks, David

[Clifton Santiago]

Hey David,

I remember several years back when building my computers that this was an issue... supposedly it was faster to fill your memory slots with lower ram than to leave space and use higher ram sticks. However, lately I have discussed the issue with several people in the know, and they don't think this is a problem anymore.

I have been spec'ing my latest machines to leave space for future ram upgrades. I'm hesitant to make 8 gb my standard rendernode spec right now...

Aaron

[DaForce]

Ram wont make a render faster, it will just help stop it getting slower. i.e. your ram runs out and starts paging to disk.

The only reason I would suggest intially sticking with just 2 sticks of ram is that often with alot of motherboards when you populate all the ram slots the ram will run slow. For instance on my motherboard the ram runs at 800mhz, if I populate all 4 slots it automatically drops it to 667mhz. Now you can probabaly boost that back up in bios but it all depends on the motherboard and if you can be assed doing that.
However this is also fairly unlikely to make any difference to your renders.

But with that in mind and that since you have only used 2 slots you still have 2 empty for future expansion I would recommend going with 2 larger sticks rather than 4 smaller.

[dlparisi]

Thanks guys, pretty much what I thought. What daforce described is what I was worried about. I knew it wouldn't make much of a time difference but I though for the difference in price I thought I'd ask. BTW: the 2x1gb is 40$ cheaper than the 4x512mb so it sounds like a win win.