I have a decent GPU and PSU lying around, and might put it in an eGPU enclosure instead of getting a dock. At the moment, I’m getting a single stick of 16GB ram, thinking that will most likely be enough, but can easily get another one if that turns out to not be the case (I don’t want to replace with an upgrade).
If I plan to use the eGPU, how much difference would dual channel make? I’m not gonna go for 2x8, but if it makes much difference, and I decide to run the eGPU, I’ll just go for 2x16 straight away.
If it’s relevant, I’ll be getting the lower-end cpu
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Hard to put a number on it as it’ll depend on application, but single channel can severely hinder performance in applications sensitive to memory bandwidth. I suspect any scenario where the CPU is the bottleneck you’ll probably see a performance hit. For gaming for example, you’ll probably be relatively okay if you’re rendering at the native resolution, since the GPU will be doing more work (the display resolution being close to 1440p), but single channel can also absolutely trash your minimum framerates in some games. There’s no one-size fits all answer to this unfortunately.
My personal inclination is always go dual channel as you can be leaving a lot of performance on the table in some applications and RAM is a comparably cheap upgrade.
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@reverse_thrust thanks. I spose I should have given more use-case context. Sorry about that.
It’s primarily for programming in rust, so running the IDE, rust-analyser, builds and tests. I’m not too interested in things that are specifically GPU intensive such as games, or running GPU accelerated software, but if I’m otherwise on the fence, that might push me over.
Really, it’s mostly about pushing pixels.
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