1Rx8 and 1Rx16 RAM in dual channel

[Eshi21]

Hi,

I watched the video about RAM banks and it got me worried because I built my PC while I was still in high school (2017 i think) and I tried to get the cheapest stuff possible..
Anyways, my configuration is:
CPU: i3-7100

RAM: 2133mhz 16GB (2x8GBs)

GPU: GTX 1060 3GB

 

It was with 8GBs of ram at first but I upgraded after some time.

 

So, after I watched the video I checked my RAM sticks and it turns out one of them is a 1Rx16 module while the other one is 1Rx8. Both of them are 2133MHz sticks and they work in dual-channel.

My question is: Is the 1Rx16 module slowing down the other one and if so, by how much?

I know these are "only 2133mhz rams" and that my i3-7100 is probably a bit of a bottleneck for 1060 but it is what it is. It was the best I could do at the time.

Considering all of that, if the 1Rx16 module is slowing down the 1Rx8 module (I think it is), is the performance hit more pronounced because of the already existing CPU bottleneck?

I know this is a very specific question and it probably can't be answered easily but yeah.. that's why I'm here.

When the semester ends and I get back home, I'll try to get another 1Rx8 module from some of my friends and do some testing to see what is the difference, but I'd like to know what kind of results should I expect because this got me actually worried.

 

Thanks

[Jurrunio]

It most likely makes no difference in modern games. 7100 is just too slow.

 

It's like not having chalk on your hands when weight lifting. The pros would be annoyed because they could lose their grip, but to people with arms that resemble flaccid noodles it will make no difference.

[Bombastinator]

Just out of curiosity do you show 16gb or 24gb

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Just out of curiosity do you show 16gb or 24gb

He's at 16GB, but one stick has 4 modules (16bit combined to 64) while the other has 8 (8 bit combined to 64).

[YoungBlade]

The LTT video was good for getting more eyeballs on this, but IMO Jarrod's Tech in his video does a better job of explaining the problem: the main thing x16 impacts is secondary timings. I'm not going to pretend I understand how secondary timings work - I can barely grasp what the primary timings are about - but the most important one on that table Jarrod shows is probably the tRFC numbers, which determine how long it takes for a row on the memory bank to be refreshed. Notice, though, that those numbers are given in nanoseconds rather than clock cycles. Because your RAM is only DDR4-2133, it might not have that much of a difference in the tRFC value. Then again, tRFC is important. Gamers Nexus showed how important tRFC is in their video/article on RAM timings.

 

Now, the next thing to consider is that you have a dual-core processor, so I doubt it's starved for memory. Remember: the CPUs in the LTT/Jarrod's Tech video are current-gen 8c/16t CPUs. When Gamers Nexus was using a 6c/12t 8700K. Those chips have plenty of cores, and so are hungry for memory. I'm not sure that those timings matter to a CPU with only 2 cores. It just doesn't need immediate access to new data because its struggling to get through the data it already has.

 

That said, if you want to experiment, I'd say go for it. I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong.

[Eshi21]

10 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

The LTT video was good for getting more eyeballs on this, but IMO Jarrod's Tech in his video does a better job of explaining the problem: the main thing x16 impacts is secondary timings. I'm not going to pretend I understand how secondary timings work - I can barely grasp what the primary timings are about - but the most important one on that table Jarrod shows is probably the tRFC numbers, which determine how long it takes for a row on the memory bank to be refreshed. Notice, though, that those numbers are given in nanoseconds rather than clock cycles. Because your RAM is only DDR4-2133, it might not have that much of a difference in the tRFC value. Then again, tRFC is important. Gamers Nexus showed how important tRFC is in their video/article on RAM timings.

 

Now, the next thing to consider is that you have a dual-core processor, so I doubt it's starved for memory. Remember: the CPUs in the LTT/Jarrod's Tech video are current-gen 8c/16t CPUs. When Gamers Nexus was using a 6c/12t 8700K. Those chips have plenty of cores, and so are hungry for memory. I'm not sure that those timings matter to a CPU with only 2 cores. It just doesn't need immediate access to new data because its struggling to get through the data it already has.

 

That said, if you want to experiment, I'd say go for it. I'd be interested to see if I'm wrong.

That's what I kinda thought even though I don't have that much knowledge about RAM. The only reason I got worried is because I've experienced a nice performance boost when I went from single channel to dual channel so I thought some of that performance is still left on the table because of 1Rx8-1Rx16 mix.
 

Thanks a lot.

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, Eshi21 said:

That's what I kinda thought even though I don't have that much knowledge about RAM. The only reason I got worried is because I've experienced a nice performance boost when I went from single channel to dual channel so I thought some of that performance is still left on the table because of 1Rx8-1Rx16 mix.
 

Thanks a lot.

My suspicion is that what you’re leaving on the table is half the 16g dimm

[YoungBlade]

On 7/5/2021 at 3:51 PM, Bombastinator said:

My suspicion is that what you’re leaving on the table is half the 16g dimm

My suspicion is that you don't know what this thread is about. We're talking about RAM density, not capacity. R1x8 and R1x16 don't have anything to do with capacity. You can have a R1x16 4GB stick or a R1x8 32GB stick.

 

The OP specifically said 2x8GB sticks. I think if the OP bought a 16GB stick and only 8GB showed up, they'd have noticed.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, YoungBlade said:

My suspicion is that you don't know what this thread is about. We're talking about RAM density, not capacity. R1x8 and R1x16 don't have anything to do with capacity. You can have a R1x16 4GB stick or a R1x8 32GB stick.

 

The OP specifically said 2x8GB sticks. I think if the OP bought a 16GB stick and only 8GB showed up, they'd have noticed.

I assumed it was a joke post because the person who I generally see use a pick of “Jerry” as an avatar generally knows more about computer specifics than me. Seems it wasn’t a joke post and not by that poster though.