Should I be worried in terms of performance that I have different RAM Densities installed on my system?

Fried.Bacon · August 31, 2021

Hey guys! Quick question

TL'DR: Should I be worried that I have different RAM Densities installed on my system?

Long version:
Just recently i've bought a Lenovo Legion 5 with the ff. base specs:
CPU: i7-10750H

RAM: 8GB
DISK: 512GB NVMe SSD
GPU: RTX 2060

During said purchase. I've requested an additional stick to make it 16GB. It's all working well so far.
But just recently: I also saw this video:

Video mentioning how RAM density is affecting performance

Now this made me curious of my system. I did further digging on the RAM that was added to my system:

>The original 8GB stick that my machine has a density of 1Rx8, while the additional stick was running 1Rx16

>Besides that, all the other RAM specs are the same; timings based on speccy show the same values as well; both are 3200MHz, same brand: Kingston (but as per checking, different chip manufacturer)
>RAM stability test tools, so far output no issues, and I am able to 100% utilize my RAM (Lenovo Vantage software has a RAM checking tool, I also run a few memory tester, software based tho, which I honestly forgot the names, i'll get back to you on them if you need them)

So with that, here are my questions:
1. Are there any significant issues that this setup causes? Objectively, my games run fine, no stutters (so far)

2. Are there any significant performance drops that I may encounter with this setup? How significant is it?

-I cant seem to find any videos/articles that have tried to benchmark/test this kind of scenario. Usually, what is shown to me are videos/articles regarding mixing different RAM speeds, amounts etc. but not mixing based on ranks.

PS:
-I am considering in the future to buy paired RAM sticks (reason why i did not buy this during laptop purchase is due to component shortage in our country, as well as during my pre-purchase research, Lenovo Legion 5 does not offer in the BIOS enabling XMP profile, which I also verified in my system, even with a BIOS update)
-I did not do the upgrade, it was the vendor of said laptop (not sure it matters, but the vendor is also Lenovo Certified Service Center)

Appreciate your thoughts people! Thank you!

Bombastinator · August 31, 2021

I missed that video. It’s bearded Linus so it can’t be much over a year or two old. How did I miss it?! Seems like one of their more critical ones even.

according to the video even really big guns can’t quite explain all the behaviors from game to game. Apparently the machine runs. If it runs it runs. I don’t know what it would do. If it runs you can test it though. I am curious as well though I don’t forsee full on functionality problems myself.

jhon lee · August 31, 2021

57 minutes ago, Fried.Bacon said:

Hey guys! Quick question

TL'DR: Should I be worried that I have different RAM Densities installed on my system?

Long version:
Just recently i've bought a Lenovo Legion 5 with the ff. base specs:
CPU: i7-10750H

RAM: 8GB
DISK: 512GB NVMe SSD
GPU: RTX 2060

During said purchase. I've requested an additional stick to make it 16GB. It's all working well so far.
But just recently: I also saw this video:

Video mentioning how RAM density is affecting performance

Now this made me curious of my system. I did further digging on the RAM that was added to my system:

>The original 8GB stick that my machine has a density of 1Rx8, while the additional stick was running 1Rx16

>Besides that, all the other RAM specs are the same; timings based on speccy show the same values as well; both are 3200MHz, same brand: Kingston (but as per checking, different chip manufacturer)
>RAM stability test tools, so far output no issues, and I am able to 100% utilize my RAM (Lenovo Vantage software has a RAM checking tool, I also run a few memory tester, software based tho, which I honestly forgot the names, i'll get back to you on them if you need them)

So with that, here are my questions:
1. Are there any significant issues that this setup causes? Objectively, my games run fine, no stutters (so far)

2. Are there any significant performance drops that I may encounter with this setup? How significant is it?

-I cant seem to find any videos/articles that have tried to benchmark/test this kind of scenario. Usually, what is shown to me are videos/articles regarding mixing different RAM speeds, amounts etc. but not mixing based on ranks.

PS:
-I am considering in the future to buy paired RAM sticks (reason why i did not buy this during laptop purchase is due to component shortage in our country, as well as during my pre-purchase research, Lenovo Legion 5 does not offer in the BIOS enabling XMP profile, which I also verified in my system, even with a BIOS update)
-I did not do the upgrade, it was the vendor of said laptop (not sure it matters, but the vendor is also Lenovo Certified Service Center)

Appreciate your thoughts people! Thank you!

i think its only going to be a massive bottleneck if its ryzen. Intel the bottleneck will exist but it will be minor probably not noticable.

Bombastinator · August 31, 2021

8 minutes ago, jhon lee said:

i think its only going to be a massive bottleneck if its ryzen. Intel the bottleneck will exist but it will be minor probably not noticable.

Didnt look that way on the video, but it wasn’t a one of each stick test. They could have done one. It would have been easy. Might only apply to those two machines though. Could be right. Be interesting to test. This one looks like it needs lots of testing which apparently hasn’t happened? Odd more of this sort of thing hasn’t turned up. I missed it though so I could be missing more and it’s been done I just don’t know about it.

Covelight · August 31, 2021

3 hours ago, Fried.Bacon said:

Are there any significant issues that this setup causes? Objectively

Shouldn't be tbh

3 hours ago, Fried.Bacon said:

Are there any significant performance drops that I may encounter with this setup? How significant is it?

not noticable, I'd say max 10% either way

i think there would be issues if you had like four sticks and some were doubles some differents speeds and such but really you may not worry about it - all is fine

3 hours ago, Fried.Bacon said:

different chip manufacturer

That's common practice and may affect perfomance but in matter of a couple percent

No need to buy new stick to replace this one just because of density

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

How did I miss it?!

Legit! was it a fluke from anouther universe?)

Fried.Bacon · August 31, 2021

3 hours ago, jhon lee said:

i think its only going to be a massive bottleneck if its ryzen. Intel the bottleneck will exist but it will be minor probably not noticable.

Agree, i've heared that Ryzen CPU's have better performance the more Ranks you have
**correct me if i stated that incorrectly

Fried.Bacon · August 31, 2021

UPDATE: After searching far and wide, the YT algorithm finally gave in and recommended this video
It's a different laptop, more or less the same scenario (less since both have the same density, rather than one being different)

TL'DR of the video:
1. Depends on the game/workload; may greatly matter, or not
2. True indeed, more or less than 10% performance boosts ON certain games that are RAM dependent
3. GPU intensive games dont care
4. Improvements in terms of FPS can be seen a lot on the 1% lows

As mentioned by @Covelight

1 hour ago, Covelight said:

That's common practice and may affect perfomance but in matter of a couple percent

No need to buy new stick to replace this one just because of density

I've also seen in other articles/forums (didnt' note the link sadly, that it seems to impact AMD processors more than Intel. Even considering that, the impact is not that high, as well as it depends on the game/workload.

Anyway, from what I get from everything, inlcuding this discussion is here is i shouldn't worry to much.
Hopefully though, Lenovo unlocks XMP profiles in the future. That way I have a very good reason to buy matched/dual-channel RAM sticks.

Thanks everyone!