Two or four dimmers available.
Two or four dimmers available.
Hello everyone, I have a query I’d like to clarify. I own an R5 3600x on a B450 tomahawk Max. Recently, I upgraded from 2x8 to 4x8 rams (3200MHz). I enabled the XMP profile in the BIOS to run all four sticks at 3200MHz. Do you know if RYZEN performs better with just two sticks? Should I bring back the two sticks? Also, I just ordered a 2x8 3600MHz because some recommend it for stability. Should I keep all four or stick with the 3600MHz model? Lastly, since I mainly use my PC for gaming, do I really need 32GB of storage?
assuming same frequency and same latency, no more sticks would perform slightly better due to it being more ranks depends on the latency 3200 CL14 = 3600 CL16 in terms of latency, for example unless if you need the bandwidth, which depends on what application you're using this for, the two example above would be the same latency wise 32gb is good for modded minecraft (or even necessary), i find and if you like multitasking (like streaming etc) here's a video for you to watch
the 3600 CL16 seems marginally better, but only if your CPU is a bottleneck. You'd probably miss the difference unless you're closely watching frame rates. It's unlikely to fail at 3600 unless your system only supports up to 3200 and that's an overclock. From what I've seen, the odds of it not running at full speed are low, though some Zen2 chips struggle with more than 3200 RAM.
Your RX 6700 XT works well with your current setup, but ensure the CPU and motherboard are compatible to avoid bottlenecks.
You can have single rank sticks and dual rank sticks. Pretty much all 4 GB sticks are single rank. A good deal of 8 GB sticks are single rank (if there's only 8 chips on the stick, almost guaranteed it's single rank, unless the manufacturer uses 16bit wide chips which are slower and typically used for laptop so-dimm sticks. In general those sticks aimed at overclocking tend to be single rank because it's easier on the cpu's memory controller to drive them, so you'd achieve higher frequencies when overclocking. Dual rank is better because the memory controller can switch between ranks reading or writing data, with minimal or no interruption. There's a small delay between the moment the controller asks to do something with that rank and the moment that rank can actually do that something, let's say a few nanoseconds... during that period that rank is not responsive so the controller would sit there doing nothing, idling, waiting for ram to be available. So with dual rank sticks, the controller can start transferring data from one rank, and send the command to get data from the second rank while still transferring data from first rank - by the time it's done transferring from first rank, data is available on second rank and the controller can jump right away to the other rank and resume transferring data. With dual channel, there's two separate channels, and the memory controller can either read or write from both at the same time, obtaining the data from sticks twice as fast (after that small delay to get the sticks ready. so especially for small chunks of data it's not always twice as fast, because let's say the controller waits 9 nanoseconds for ram to get ready and then data gets transferred from sticks in 2 nanoseconds - in single channel mode the controller would still wait 9 nanoseconds for stick to get ready and then data would be transferred in 4 nanoseconds - so you only shaved 2 nanoseconds out of 13 nanoseconds by going dual channel, not twice as fast) So ideally, you'd use 4 dual rank sticks, as that would allow the memory controller the most flexibility, but... that comes at a cost, it's more work for the memory controller so it's harder to keep sticks running at very high frequencies. With some motherboards it's possible for example to not be able to keep 4 dual rank sticks at 3600 Mhz and you'd have to go down to 3200 Mhz, or maybe even 3000 Mhz with processors like first generation Ryzen and SOME combinations of motherboard + 2nd generation Ryzen processors. People recommending two sticks always do it because that will give you the most potential for overclocking, to get the lowest timings and higher frequencies, but if you don't overclock, there's no point in stressing over 2 sticks or 4 sticks. You probably won't notice much difference between 3200 and 3600 mhz - probably a few fps in some games. If you already have 4 x 8 3200 mhz, I'd leave it at that. Now that you bought 3600 sticks, you could just use the 3600 sticks with a pair of 3200 sticks in your system, running all four at 3200 mhz of course, and sell one of your 3200 mhz pairs. later, if you don't feel like 32 GB gives you a noticeable increase of performance in games, sell the other pair of 3200 mhz sticks and you'll be left with the 3600 mhz pair. Try selling them now when the prices are decent ... next year when the DDR5 becomes more common the DDR4 prices will start to fall down a bit. Then maybe in a couple of years they'll go up just like DDR3 prices are up now.
Thanks! I purchased the items on Amazon last day and can process the return smoothly.