Valve Explains Why the Steam Machine is Shipping with Single-Channel DDR5 Memory

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It may have slipped your notice if you haven't been looking up detailed specs on the Steam Machine, but the device is shipping with 1 stick of DDR5 memory from the manufacturer, meaning you'll be running your memory in single channel, rather than the standard dual channel that most devices employ.

What does this mean in real-world terms? Well, you might see degraded performance, such as stuttering, in intensive scenes when the CPU needs to access large amounts of memory quickly. Having 2 sticks of DDR5 RAM in a device allows the CPU to access both sticks simultaneously, but with just 1 stick, it has to handle all of the reading and writing by itself.

So why did Valve make the decision to go with 1 stick of 16GB memory instead of 2 sticks of 8GB memory? Simply put, they had no choice. According to Steam Machine engineer Yazan Aldehayyat (speaking to Digital Foundry), getting hold of 8GB SODIMM sticks proved "literally impossible", effectively forcing them to adopt a single stick of 16GB of DDR5.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. The Steam Machine does have 2 SODIMM slots, so if you do want to upgrade the memory of your Steam Machine in the future, you can grab another 16GB stick and insert it to boost your memory up to 32GB. This would have been more difficult (and costly) had the device shipped with 2 8GB sticks. It's a shame that this is left up to the end-user, however.

Most games likely won't see big performance hits from this decision, but CPU-intensive games may start to show degraded performance compared to what you would otherwise see with dual channel.

Source: Digital Foundry

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