Single rank vs dual rank: what’s the difference and which to choose? Before answering the question, it is necessary to know what memory rank is. In addition, find the difference between the two memory ranks. Now, explore these details with MiniTool.

What Is Memory Rank

Memory rank is a term created by JEDEC – a standard group of memory industry in order to distinguish the number of memory banks on a module and the number of memory bands on a component (or memory chip).

The memory rank is a block or area of data that is created by using some or all the memory chips on the module. Generally speaking, a rank is a data block that is 64 bits wide. To support error correction code on the system, additional 8 bits are added. So, the data block will be 72 bits in width.

Memory rank may have one, two, four or more blocks of 64-bit wide data areas according to the number of engineered memory module. Among them, single rank and dual rank are often discussed.

Single rank vs dual rank: which is more suitable for laptop? Well, you can get the answer after reading the content below.

You may also be interested in this: What Is Dual Channel RAM? Here’s the Complete Guide

Single Rank vs Dual Rank: Appearance

 A single-rank DIMM (module) has one set of chips that can be accessed when writing or reading from the memory. Dual rank memory contains two single rank chips on one memory module, but only one rank is accessible at a time. Dual and quad rank DIMM offers the greatest capacity because of the current memory technology.

How to distinguish sing rank and dual rank memory? Actually, it is very easy to tell their difference from appearance. A direct way is to read the information displayed on the memory’s information sticker. The single rank memory has a 1Rx on it. You can often see 1Rx8/1Rx16 and something like that.

single rank memory

For a dual rank memory, you will see 2Rx on the information sticker of the memory. While on a quad rank memory, you will see 4Rx. The width of a single rank memory is 64-bit, while that of dual rank memory is 128-bit.

Recommended reading: How Much RAM Can My Computer Take? Check the Maximum RAM Now!

Single Rank vs Dual Rank: Compatibility

Compatibility is another aspect on RAM single rank vs dual rank. In fact, most dual rank memory can work with the single rank memory. When you use a large amount of memory like 32GB, severs motherboards require you to use a combination of single and dual rank memory.

Single Rank vs Dual Rank: Performance

According to various tests, we find that there is no obvious difference between the single rank memory and the dual rank memory. The point is that the CPU usage always is higher (10-25%) on anything on single rank memory configuration compared with that of dual rank memory.

If less CPU is utilized, it is because that the CPU wastes some time on waiting the RAM. As dual rank memory takes two address cycles to read the entire module, it is inherently slower. 

Dual rank vs single rank RAM: which to select? Do you have answers now? The answer on dual rank vs single rank may vary from person to person. 

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