Single vs Dual Channel

[LV3]

Is there really a huge difference?

I bought a single 8GB stick the other day at Microcenter for a mini-ITX build I'm doing for a family member, but as time has gone by waiting for a few other parts from Amazon its bugging me more and more that the system is (so far) going to be single channel.

Is the bandwidth hit going to be large enough to be real concerned about? They only do some light gaming / web browsing. Should I brave the holiday traffic to return the RAM and pay a bit more for a dual channel kit or can I rest easy knowing that single channel isn't too much of a big deal?

This persons budget is pretty tight so I was trying to shave every bit off I could, but this ones bothering me.

 

[lyssword]

1-3% (based on my intel system)

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Unless you are benchmarking, you will notice no real world difference in applications.

 

[Cerb]

We're missing important information. Are you using IGP? If so, the more bandwidth, the better. If discrete:
http://www.behardware.com/articles/814-3/ddr3-impact-of-channels-timings.html
Yeah, sure, it's not new, but you can see the reason why review sites usually don't bother to take the time to even test it, because these days, when they do, the difference is typically pretty small.

 

[LV3]

Using a discrete GPU. It seems there's nothing really to worry about. Thanks all. :awe: