SPlLLZ I just watched gamers Nexus and they officially said because of ram issues they will EITHER come with one 16gb stick OR 2 8gb sticks… which is kind of crazy… but this article isn't accurate Reply
GenericUser2001 I would personally prefer taking the performance hit from having 1 stick of RAM now, since it gives you an easier upgrade path in the future. Just adding one more 16 GB stick later is better than having to buy a 32 GB kit and then you have 2x8GB stick lying around doing nothing. Reply
Roland Of Gilead GenericUser2001 said: I would personally prefer taking the performance hit from having 1 stick of RAM now, since it gives you an easier upgrade path in the future. Just add one more 16 GB stick later than having to buy a 32 GB kit and then you have 2x8GB stick lying around doing nothing. Yeah, but that's not ideal. Not all ram play together well, even if same brand and model, timings and voltage. Unless they are from a kit, you couldn't be certain they will work together. The single stick is defo a bad choice. But, having a 2 DIMM kits possibly works out more expensive, and the Steam MAchine is already a very expensive piece of kit for what it is. Reply
hotaru251 GenericUser2001 said: I would personally prefer taking the performance hit from having 1 stick of RAM now, since it gives you an easier upgrade path in the future. …spending RAM $$ as upgrade path is a waste of $. you are legit better off saying it towards a new system/console than upgrading its ram as it has greater value that way Reply
bit_user The article said: Tests have shown that using single-channel memory can reduce performance by about 9% to 13% compared to dual-channel memory, On which CPU? This is only a 6-core Zen 4 laptop CPU, where 4 of those are Zen 4C. If you're saying single-channel is a bottleneck on such a low-end CPU, then dual-channel should be a massive bottleneck on CPUs with far more cores, like the 7900X and 7950X! Yet, the evidence I've seen about memory bandwidth scaling doesn't really support that. The article said: more optimistic gamers can consider this a boon as they could easily upgrade the console to 32GB if they have an extra matching 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM stick Does the machine actually have 2x slots? I had assumed they went with only a single slot, or else why doesn't the high-end option include 2x DIMMs? Reply
bit_user SPlLLZ said: I just watched gamers Nexus and they officially said because of ram issues they will EITHER come with one 16gb stick OR 2 8gb sticks… which is kind of crazy… but this article isn't accurate The article explains the discrepancy, which was cleared up by Valve. This is from the first paragraph of the article: The article said: The company confirmed this in a correction to Gamers Nexus (GN), after its engineers initially said that Steam Machines could either come with a single 16GB stick or two 8GB sticks. “We misspoke here,” Valve wrote in its email to the media channel. “All units will actually have one 16GB stick of RAM.” Reply
ezst036 Wait. 1 stick is the better option. That way you can just push another 16GB into the second slot later on and not be throwing away two 8gb sticks and making a more expensive 32GB purchase. A 1x 16gb purchase is cheaper, to then get to your 32gb goal. So 1 stick is the better option. (Unless you want to go 64gb well then the whole exercise is irrelevant) The math tells the truth here for going to 32GB. Reply
Roland Of Gilead bit_user said: Does the machine actually have 2x slots? I'm pretty sure it has 2 slots. I'll try find the link to the specs I saw. Reply
bit_user ezst036 said: Wait. 1 stick is the better option. That way you can just push another 16GB into the second slot later on and not be throwing away two 8gb sticks and making a more expensive 32GB purchase. If it even has 2 slots, which I've not seen evidence that it does. I'd agree that, if the long-term goal is 32 GB, then using 16 GB DIMMs is better. 8 GB DIMMs seem to have a performance penalty vs. 16 GB DIMMs, but I haven't seen this quantified. Reply
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