Poor Performance With W/ 8 GB Stick of G.SKILL Ripjaws 1866

[Donk]

Hi, thanks for reading this.

So I bought one stick of this very nice RAM:
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-14900CL10S-8GBXL

It's been a while since I've built and wasn't aware of the benefits of DUAL Channel VS. Single Channel. So rather than having two sticks of 4 GIGS (which I realize now I should have bought) I have ONE stick of 8GB and 3 empty DIMM slots. Dum da dum dum dum.

It wouldn't bother me much expect I seem to be getting really poor benchmark tests. It gets a 1202 PASSMARK result which is 50-80% poorer than the other 8GB configurations (all which operate 2X4GBs).

So I'm wondering:

1.) Am I nuts? Should I care?
2.) Is it likely the single channel that's causing this poor performance, or something else?

I'm thinking I'll just get another identical stick to go DUAL but know I probably don't need 16 GB.

I can provide any other info needed. Thanks!

[Tradesman]

Yep single channel can bottleneck performance especially when multitasking/gaming/etc

[Donk]

fixed

Thanks for the reply. I went ahead and purchased another 8GB stick.

I do wonder what the real world application of dual channel vs single channel is. I can see how it affects the benchmark tests but daily computing? Edit: You mention gaming / multitasking but everything I read seemed to indicate performance levels were not greatly impacted. However my APU works with the memory so I wonder about that too.

Anyway, consider this matter closed! GSKILL FTW.

[Tradesman]

DUAL channel can provide up to a 10-15% gain performance wise

[Donk]

interesting

That's what had me stumped was in the benchmark tests, like I said in the first post, it was performing much worse than that. 50-80%. But if I understand, you're saying in your daily computing you might see a 10-15% performance gain.

[Tradesman]

Correct