Adding RAM

Sqrly · Mar 9, 2024

Sir_George said:
For the first question; Quad-channel mode offers greater bandwidth; hence, if you run memory-intensive programs, the performance improvement will be significant. The processor can access the four sticks simultaneously to complete the job instead of the single or dual sticks.

For the second question; It has been advised for some time that matching ram is best. I don't have any personal experience with using different ram sticks, so no personal opinion to provide.

Not true. For maximum performance go with 2 sticks (When you have 4 slots). Using four will actually be slower because the memory controller will end up throttling.

64GB is overkill unless your doing heavy video editing. I am a gamer and I watch my mem usage in real time on my second montitor and only a few of the newest resource intensive games push 'total' system memory useage above 16GB.

As for mixing brands, technically you can do it but, it is not optimal nor reccomended. If both are the same capacity and have the same timings it should work fine. You can even mix timings so long as both will run fine with the timings of the slower module.

I'm in the middle of building new PC's right now and chose G-Skill this time around because of it's high performance. (Actually, following that link, that mem is a tad slower then what I bought. They seem to be out of the 6700MT/s)

PerpetualCycle · Mar 9, 2024

Sqrly said:
Not true. For maximum performance go with 2 sticks (When you have 4 slots). Using four will actually be slower because the memory controller will end up throttling.

64GB is overkill unless your doing heavy video editing. I am a gamer and I watch my mem usage in real time on my second montitor and only a few of the newest resource intensive games push 'total' system memory useage above 16GB.

As for mixing brands, technically you can do it but, it is not optimal nor reccomended. If both are the same capacity and have the same timings it should work fine. You can even mix timings so long as both will run fine with the timings of the slower module.

I'm in the middle of building new PC's right now and chose G-Skill this time around because of it's high performance. (Actually, following that link, that mem is a tad slower then what I bought. They seem to be out of the 6700MT/s)

He is talking about 4 channels not 4 DIMM with two channel. Practically all consumer motherboards are two channels (with up to 4 DIMM). 4 channels will be faster than two channels, but unless he gets a processor and motherboard that supports 4 channels (like a XEON and commercial motherboard), this fact is moot. What he said is correct and what you said, for two channel processors and boards, is also correct

Sqrly · Mar 9, 2024

PerpetualCycle said:
He is talking about 4 channels not 4 DIMM with two channel. Practically all consumer motherboards are two channels (with up to 4 DIMM). 4 channels will be faster than two channels, but unless he gets a processor and motherboard that supports 4 channels (like a XEON and commercial motherboard), this fact is moot.

Ah ok, I got you. I rarely venture beyond personal use PC's so I confused 4ch with 4 slots.