5 ms·
Tell HN: Impact of using 1 or 2 sticks of DDR5 on a 6800HX with 680M IG
A few months ago, I ordered a Minisforum UM690 for work.
For less than 500 bucks, this little beast is equipped with the incredibly powerful 8 cores / 16 threads Ryzen 9 6900HX (4.9GHz) and an integrated RDN2 680M graphics card (the single thread performance of this mobile CPU is just 10% lower than my home 5800X desktop PC).
I do some light gaming on my lunch break, and I was pretty impressed by the gaming performance of the 680M.
Because of budget constraints at the time of ordering, I could only afford a single stick of Gskill - RipJaws 16 Go DDR5 4800 MHz CL34.
I made a few benchmarks on multiple games, but most games I play do not come with a proper benchmark loop, so I used Unigine Superposition Benchmark to make a proper benchmark.
Single 16 GB stick, 1080p, medium settings: 3022 (18.85 min fps, 22.61 avg fps, 31.85 max fps)
Those results were good for an IGPU, but I saw a few articles saying that having two sticks instead of one could improve performance (never backed up with benchmarks or hard numbers).
So I bought another stick. Here are the results with two sticks:
Dual 16 GB sticks, 1080p, medium settings: 4969 (31.66 min fps, 37.17 avg fps, 48.96 max fps)
Yep, this is a whopping +65% with two sticks!
So, if you use a CPU with an integrated graphics card, you should use 2 sticks!
- storrgie 4y agoThanks for posting this. These new systems that can expose a PCIe slot are extremely impressive.
- behohippy 4y agoI've noticed the same with my Asus TUF laptops. I've had 2 generations of the 15" models with Ryzen processors and adding a second stick seemed to "wake" them up in a noticeable way. They Ryzen memory controller really seems to benefit from memory running in DDR mode (2 sticks).
- wtallis 4y ago> benefit from memory running in DDR mode (2 sticks). That's not what DDR means. DDR means transferring data on both the rising edge and falling edge of the clock signal. That's true no matter how many chips or modules are involved. You're thinking of running memory in a dual-channel configuration, which requires two modules but is not synonymous with using two memory sticks, because using both channels also requires putting your two memory modules in the correct slots so that you don't have two modules sharing one channel.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Luc 4y agoYou replaced a single 16GB RAM stick with 2 8GB ones, right?
- guilamu 4y agoNope, I just added another 16 GB RAM (32 GB total), but the UNIGINE testing I'm doing here is using 1.5GB of VRAM and basically no RAM at all, the results would be the same with 2x8GB or 2x32GB (but I see your point, it's not very "scientific" to replace 16GB by 32GB).
- causi 4y agoAre people these days not generally aware of the difference between single-channel and dual-channel RAM configurations?
- Dalewyn 4y agoMost people will probably think you're talking about rams as in the animal, or maybe the truck. Computer literacy is on its way down, not that it was particularly high in the first place, so it's foolhardy to just assume some random Joe would know what a computer is, let alone RAM, let alone channels.
- causi 4y agoWell, I really meant "HN readers" when I said "people". Totally agree with your point though. Kids don't think technology is cool anymore. When I was growing up even the jocks knew how to burn a CD or put a file on a flash drive.
- Dalewyn 4y agoI recall reading some post on a programmer's blog a couple years ago. He lost all his data because he didn't know how to run backups properly; he was the kind of guy who would call over a friend to help him fix something as trivial as badly seated RAM (he wouldn't know it was something trivial, obviously). Yes. That is a programmer with literally no knowledge of what a computer is or how it works, even at a very rudimentary level. Ever since I've been careful to never assume anyone knows anything about computers until they demonstrate otherwise, even in a seemingly techy place like HN.
- JosephRedfern 4y ago> Computer literacy is on its way down Perhaps it depends on your definition of "Copmuter literacy", but do you have any evidence to back up that claim? I find it surprising.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
- dang 4y agoThis is fine to post, but not as a Show HN - see https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. I've done a s/Show/Tell/ on the title so it's fine now.
- guilamu 4y agoAll right, my bad.
- Laaas 4y agoI considered buying one because of this post, but https://store.minisforum.com/ https://store.minisforum.com/ unfortunately seems to be down right now.
- guilamu 4y agoIt's working fine right now. If you have any pre-buy questions, shoot.
- matfior 4y agoHow are the thermals under load? I would like to buy one of these for gaming and I am reading some horror stories on reddit about high temperatures and throttling of RAM and SSD. It seems the QA is all over the place (liquid metal not applied correctly, running all over the motherboard). I would get the preassembled version, not the barebone, but I am still a bit reluctant.
- guilamu 4y agoThermals are what you choose them to be, pretty much. The whole thing is capped at 80°C. It will throttle after that. In the bios you can select the CPU wattage from 28 to 58 I think (I won't be at work for the next two weeks so I can't say for sure). So If you select 28 watts you'll never hit the temperature limit, if you select 58, you will for sure. Considering the power I'm getting out of it, I think the liquid metal was properly applied, but I can't know for sure without taking it appart.
- bootloop 4y agoDid you clock the RAM correctly? Enable XMP/EXPO? What timings and clocks is it running on?
- guilamu 4y agoYeah, no, the UM690 BIOS is pretty basic. 4800 is the slowest possible clock speed for DDR5. You can "overclock" RAM in the BIOS but just by changing 4800 to anything up to 6000. You can't setup timings or voltage so this is pretty useless imho (I tried 5000/5200/5400 all resulting in instability after a while).
- SMAAART 4y agoWhen you say > Dual 16 GB sticks, 1080p, medium settings: 4969 (31.66 min fps, 37.17 avg fps, 48.96 max fps) Do you mean 32 GB in total?
- guilamu 4y agoYes, I do, and as I said in another reply: I just added another 16 GB RAM (32 GB total), but the UNIGINE testing I'm doing here is using 1.5GB of VRAM and basically no RAM at all, the results would be the same with 2x8GB or 2x32GB (but I see your point, it's not very "scientific" to replace 16GB by 32GB).
- doofenschmirtz 4y agoHas little to do with the ram and much more to do with your processor and how it handles caching and memory channels, especially considering you were using integrated graphics. (Which would be cached where?)
- kristianp 4y agoSame thing with intel. 11th gen (and 12th gen) laptops with integrated graphics come with this disclaimer [1] > Intel Iris Xe Graphics capability requires system to be configured with dual-channel memory. On the system with single-channel memory, Intel Iris Xe Graphics will function as Intel UHD Graphics. [1] https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_E14_Gen_2_Intel/ThinkPad_E14_Gen_2_Intel_Spec.pdf https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_E...
- mrlonglong 4y agoGoing from 2 sticks to 4 sticks on my threadripper drastically improved thoughput so yes, always a good idea to max out the channels. I'm just happy I still have 4 more to fill but I probably won't need that much extra memory for years to come.