The Dirty Way Manufacturers are Downgrading Your PC

Memory manufacturers are changing the density of RAM in laptops, and the performance impact is staggering.

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 - Le Intro
0:56 - Cable Mod
1:07 - Intro
1:16 - Is this RAM different?
3:06 - Productivity Testing
5:00 - Game Testing
9:03 - What exactly is going on?
12:07 - What a MUX doing?
14:10 - Does this matter for Desktops?
15:00 - Yep, buying laptops in 2021 is way more difficult than it should be
15:49 - Mine
16:40 - Outro

[JarrodsTech]

It's great to see this topic covered! It seems like there are so many ways performance can differ with laptops based on specs that aren't even listed anywhere. We finally started to get GPU power limits listed for products, so hopefully RAM details are next. Often it's also not clear whether or not a laptop has a MUX switch either, depends on the brand though.

[HarshdeepSingh-kvum]

If it weren’t for Tech Channels, manufacturers would be getting away with A LOT of stuff.

[monetary]

They sneak into your house and replace your parts with worse ones

[photoniccannon]

$1650 might be a “cheaper gaming laptop” - but that’s still a lot of money. Enough for them to spend the extra $3 on proper RAM. Getting fed up with the computer market these days.

[Dire]

I'm seeing a lot of confusion here about 1x8 and 1x16 and people thinking it has to do with single and dual rank. This specifically has nothing to do with ranks but everything to do with how a x8 device is configured and how a x16 device is configured within a DIMM.

In the video, Linus touched upon it but I think didn't explicitly state the technical exact reason for the difference in performance. He was very close to it, and I think gave a sufficient explanation for it but here I'll try to elaborate if it interests you.

You can lay out the total capacity for a DIMM in various ways really, in this case you have two ways to achieve 8GB of total capacity (note the bit to byte conversion):
1. 1 rank of 8 chips x 8Gb in density = 64Gb total density = 8GB total density
2. 1 rank of 4 chips x 16Gb in density = 64 Gb total density = 8GB total density

The nomenclature for the device width is related to the total amount of data pins on a channel. DDR4 channels are typically 64-bits wide, so if you have a:
1. x8 device- it means a single rank within the channel has exactly 8 chips to make-up 64 data pins
2. x16 device- it means a single rank within the channel has exactly 4 chips to make-up 64 data pins

Now with the explanation out of the way, you can go deeper into the architectural layout typically found in devices in DDR4:
1. a x8 device has a total of 16 addressable banks (it has 4 Bank Groups and 4 Banks per Bank Group) with a 1KB page size [each page a bank is allowed to open at any given time]
2. a x16 device has a total of 8 addressable banks (it has 2 Bank Groups and 4 Banks per Bank Group) with a 2KB page size

Having less banks available to the MC means you have less resources to interleave and lower chances of extracting the full BW available according to the rated maximum bus speed. The analogy Linus gave about the librarian searching for a book makes total sense with this in mind.

Now the next thing to affect performance is the page size:
Typically the page size usually dictates tFAW (Four Activate Window Time), so it's usually worse for 2KB than it is for 1KB by several nano-seconds which can affect performance [need to look up data sheets for a given device by the given manufacturer to look up exactly what they are].

You can look up the datasheets via google, I quickly found ones by micron for example.

Anyway as for why this happens, this is directly tied to memory advancements really, over time memory chip suppliers make denser chips on smaller nodes. As time goes on they will have more of one kind than the other. Given the density of the DIMM here is 8GB, that means as memory gets more advanced, they can make more wafers to supply everyone in the world (and a bonus is that its cheaper to include less chips on a module to sell for the same 8GB capacity OR to now make denser DIMMs aka 16GB x8 modules).

Hope this long explanation is enlightening to some people here!

[yuganter]

Jarrod's tech finally getting recognition he deserves

[infrnalis]

LTT and other tech channels are an absolute necessity in this space and make themselves invaluable to consumers.

[dougfraser]

I worked for a modem chip manufacturer back in the late 90s. The end modem manufacturers would sell awesome perfect modems for 90 days, until all the reviews were in, then start shipping cost reduced versions afterward. It drove us crazy. Some of them did good quality cost reduction and they still worked well, but others did crap work on the redesign, and the performance took a huge hit.

[mariomiltiadous]

The scary thing is that some laptops and AIO's have soldered RAM...

[ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking]

The RAM timings are the same for both X16 and X8 memory chips. The performance penalty is that X16 chips use the slow timings more often than the x8 chips.

[xplodingmojo]

“Gullible humans, fighting between Intel and AMD,

T’WAS I WHO PLAYED THOUSE!!!”
~ DDR4 module

[RonnieRedd]

In the server world we've known about the difference in ram density for a long time. There's a cost difference, not a conspiracy. The amd laptop you're testing is the result of cost cutting and keeping the margin to boost profits. It's crappy that any manufacturer would hide the density.

[bxtz]

You know it's bad when you can't even download the good RAM.

[harbirsingh]

First SSD speeds and now RAM. We need a new series that covers bad practices by manufacturers.

[goshinbi]

"If you were to buy a computer today"
Nice joke Linus.

[rageofsweets]

This also happens with SSDs as well. The first batches of drives that go out to reviewers will be fine but later batches may have different/worse/cheaper chips inside. Capacity still the same but read/write times aren't going to be as good as those initial reviews say they should be and mfgrs get better profit margins...

[TwilightWolf]

Title: "The Dirty Way Manufacturers are Downgrading Your PC"
Me: "Please, no! My PC can't get more potato than it already is!"

[albertpolak]

Guys the graphs could use some improvement, takes some time to spot what the difference is and what is what. Please have the two results from the same laptops side by side.

[Decco]

I like how Anthony is known as the 'Big A" now

[gessha]

You're talking about "smart marketing" while manufacturers' websites are still unusable messes of redundant information. I'm looking at you, Dell!