Upgrading RAM

[chestersbusy]

I currently have two sticks of 8 GB RAM in dual channel mode. If I buy two more 8 GB sticks and put them in the motherboard would that make it quad channel and will there be any drawbacks or would I need to buy 4 new sticks of ram to get the highest performance?

[YoungBlade]

It wouldn't be quad-channel, as that requires a high-end desktop (Threadripper, Xeon, or Intel Extreme) or server grade CPU. It would, however, give you dual-rank operation, which has minor performance benefits.

 

As long as the RAM plays nice together, it should be fine. Ideally, you want to get exactly the same RAM as you already have - same model, speed, etc - to give it the best chance of working well.

[chestersbusy]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

It wouldn't be quad-channel, as that requires a high-end desktop (Threadripper, Xeon, or Intel Extreme) or server grade CPU. It would, however, give you dual-rank operation, which has minor performance benefits.

 

As long as the RAM plays nice together, it should be fine. Ideally, you want to get exactly the same RAM as you already have - same model, speed, etc - to give it the best chance of working well.

Is there anyway of knowing which ram you already have? I got a prebuilt, and they dont offer it anymore so the part list dissapeared

[YoungBlade]

Just now, chestersbusy said:

Is there anyway of knowing which ram you already have? I got a prebuilt, and they dont offer it anymore so the part list dissapeared

You can use applications like CPU-Z and Speccy to see the RAM model, speed, and timings. Or you can open up the computer to inspect it yourself; the RAM should have a sticker on it that gives that info.

[IkeaGnome]

2 minutes ago, chestersbusy said:

Is there anyway of knowing which ram you already have? I got a prebuilt, and they dont offer it anymore so the part list dissapeared

CPU Z can usually recognize the RAM and give you a part number.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Same with HWInfo

https://www.hwinfo.com

[chestersbusy]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

CPU Z can usually recognize the RAM and give you a part number.

https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Same with HWInfo

https://www.hwinfo.com

Thank you guys, I found my ram type. One more question, if I get only one more ram stick instead of two would that impact performance at all?

[YoungBlade]

Just now, chestersbusy said:

Thank you guys, I found my ram type. One more question, if I get only one more ram stick instead of two would that impact performance at all?

It would likely hurt your performance. 3 sticks usually runs in single-channel mode, so you'd be going backwards in performance.

[IkeaGnome]

Just now, chestersbusy said:

Thank you guys, I found my ram type. One more question, if I get only one more ram stick instead of two would that impact performance at all?

Ideally, you'd have 2 or 4 sticks of RAM. 

If you have 2 4 gig sticks of RAM, you'd have 8 gigs in dual channel. If you had 3 sticks of 4, 8 would be dual channel and 4 gigs would be single channel. It makes things weird. 

[chestersbusy]

1 minute ago, IkeaGnome said:

Ideally, you'd have 2 or 4 sticks of RAM. 

If you have 2 4 gig sticks of RAM, you'd have 8 gigs in dual channel. If you had 3 sticks of 4, 8 would be dual channel and 4 gigs would be single channel. It makes things weird. 

ok thank you all

[Covelight]

11 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

It would likely hurt your performance. 3 sticks usually runs in single-channel mode, so you'd be going backwards in performance.

The optimum is to use the maximum capacity low timings dual channel solutions.

[YoungBlade]

1 hour ago, Covelight said:

The optimum is to use the maximum capacity low timings dual channel solutions.

Where did I say anything different? Did you quote the wrong post?

[Covelight]

2 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Where did I say anything different? Did you quote the wrong post?

Oh, didn't mean to quote at all, was just general advice

[Chiyawa]

14 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

3 sticks usually runs in single-channel mode,

Well, in many modern system, if you put 3 sticks of RAM, the system still treat it as dual channel. The system will treat the matching pair as dual channel, and the odd one will be like extended RAM. I have a Dell Vostro 200 (running Core 2 Duo E6600, by the way), having 3x 1GB DDR2 RAM, and the BIOS still listed it run at dual channel mode.

 

Yeah, performance will suffer if the system use more than 2GB of RAM, though sometimes it is hardly noticeable.

 

This video that Linus made explains what happens if you mix the RAM. Of course he is not recommending it, but your system might still work.

 

[YoungBlade]

27 minutes ago, Chiyawa said:

Well, in many modern system, if you put 3 sticks of RAM, the system still treat it as dual channel. The system will treat the matching pair as dual channel, and the odd one will be like extended RAM. I have a Dell Vostro 200 (running Core 2 Duo E6600, by the way), having 3x 1GB DDR2 RAM, and the BIOS still listed it run at dual channel mode.

 

Yeah, performance will suffer if the system use more than 2GB of RAM, though sometimes it is hardly noticeable.

 

This video that Linus made explains what happens if you mix the RAM. Of course he is not recommending it, but your system might still work.

 

It can run in a hybrid mode, but that "can" is so important that I typically say "it'll run in single channel mode." I've seen too many posts on here and elsewhere where that happens. Granted, there's a sampling bias, as people only complain about their RAM running in single channel - if it is running dual, they never post asking how to fix it.

 

Also, if you are running out of RAM already, then you're going to go into that single channel, so the odds of a negative performance hit becomes likely again.

[Chiyawa]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

It can run in a hybrid mode, but that "can" is so important that I typically say "it'll run in single channel mode." I've seen too many posts on here and elsewhere where that happens. Granted, there's a sampling bias, as people only complain about their RAM running in single channel - if it is running dual, they never post asking how to fix it.

 

Also, if you are running out of RAM already, then you're going to go into that single channel, so the odds of a negative performance hit becomes likely again.

True.

 

But well, through my experience, the performance (like Linus pointed out) is sometimes negligible in day to day use, like playing games or web browsing. However, when it comes to rendering, then it'll pretty much have a noticeable performance dip.