[Special feature] Why is 4GB of memory useless? Confront with an 8GB PC. Comparison and verification of speed difference when using Windows with video --PC Watch

First of all, know the performance difference between 4GB and 8GB environment by benchmark

The memory capacity is 2GB or more according to the operating requirements of Windows 10, and it works even with 4GB of memory. The reason why many low-priced PCs have 4GB of memory is that cost is important, but is that really comfortable?

In fact, even with benchmark software, a PC with 4GB of memory has a lower score than a PC with a larger amount of memory. First, let's take a look at the benchmark score.

[Apology and correction] At the time of the first appearance, the memory capacity was set to 4GB or more according to the operating requirements of Windows 10, but it should be 2GB or more. We apologize for the correction.

This time, based on the desktop PC "mouse DT5" of the mouse computer, we compared the state with 4GB of memory and the state with 8GB of memory. Since the mouse DT5 is the current model, it has 8GB of memory even in the standard configuration. Therefore, we prepared two 4GB modules separately for memory. Note that since it is 4GB x 2, the memory operation mode is different from single channel and dual channel in this verification.

For rigorous verification, you should compare 4GB x 1 and 8GB x 1, but if you want to upgrade a desktop PC with 4GB of memory at the lowest cost, add another 4GB module. It would be reasonable to do. It is common sense in today's PCs to add memory in even-numbered units. This time, I would like you to see the merit of expanding from 4GB to 8GB or more, not only the capacity but also the performance improvement by changing the operation mode to dual channel.

Now, let's take a quick look at some benchmark scores. First of all, I would like to compare with PCMark 10, which is an index of system performance.

As shown in the graph above, the 8GB memory environment has a higher score for all items. PCMark 10 runs 3-4 tests each in 3 scenarios. Extracting the top three tests with the highest score improvement rates, App Start-up in the Essentials scenario is ranked first, Video Editing in the Digital Content Creation scenario is ranked second, and Web Browsing in the Essentials scenario is ranked third.

App Start-up is an app launch test, so it's relevant to any PC. And Web Browsing is probably the most frequently used application for web browsers on today's PCs, whether private or business. Productivity, which is a business scenario, is not ranked in the top three, but both the Spreadsheets and Writing tests scored about 5% higher in the 8GB environment than in the 4GB environment. ing.

In this way, it can be seen that the overall performance of PC work is improved simply by increasing the memory from 4GB to 8GB.

Next, let's take a look at Cinebench R23. This is a benchmark that looks at the computing performance of the CPU, and although it may seem that there is not much impact on memory, in reality there is a lot of data exchange between the memory and the CPU. Rather than capacity, it is a test to see the difference in operation mode between 4GB x 1 single channel and 4GB x 2 dual channel, that is, the performance difference depending on the memory transfer speed.

When CPU (Multi Core) is using all threads and CPU (Single Core) is "mouse DT5", it is the score when only one thread out of 6 cores 12 threads of Core i5-10400 is used. In both cases, a 2% improvement was confirmed.

The other is Dragon Quest X Benchmark Software, which compares 3D graphics performance. Since the "mouse DT5" is a PC without a video card, it uses the GPU function integrated in the CPU.

In addition, although the video card has a dedicated video memory, the GPU function integrated in the CPU does not have this, and the main memory of the PC is borrowed as the video memory.

In this case, since the main memory is shared first, the usable capacity of the main memory as seen from the PC is the capacity obtained by subtracting the amount secured by the GPU function as video memory from the total amount of memory, and the transfer speed of the memory is 3D performance. Please keep in mind that dual channel has higher performance than single channel because it has a large effect on.

For the above reasons, the score difference is wider than the previous benchmarks. It can be seen that the score has improved by 37% by changing the memory from 4GB of single channel to 4GB x 2 of dual channel.