2x8GB 3200 dual channel or 4x8GB 3200 no quad channel supported?

[Adrianeks]

Hi, I've got Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE and i've got  (2x8GB) 3200MHz CL16. I'm considering buying another 2x8GB 3200Mhz CL16 RAM, but as far as I know my motherboard doesn't support quad channel. WIll it be better with dual channel or with 4 sticks but not quad channel? WIll there be any negative effects of this?

[Moonzy]

4 minutes ago, Adrianeks said:

as far as I know my motherboard doesn't support quad channel.

you're right, it doesnt support quad channel

but it supports 4 DIMMS, which doesnt necessarily mean quad channel

 

5 minutes ago, Adrianeks said:

WIll it be better with dual channel or with 4 sticks but not quad channel?

4 sticks is still dual channel (in your case)

so both are equivalent, except...

5 minutes ago, Adrianeks said:

WIll there be any negative effects of this?

you might not be able to run 3200MHz on Dual Rank Dual channel config, but most ryzen 3000 CPU and newer should be fine, not too sure about CPU before that

[mariushm]

The memory will still run in Dual Channel mode, but you'll have 2 sticks per channel, so double the capacity on each channel.

 

You'll get a tiny bit of a performance increase simply by Windows not having to page stuff to the hard drive / ssd (which it would do rarely either way with 16 GB of memory)

You'll get a tiny bit of a performance increase because Windows would cache often accessed files in that unused memory, so some applications will speed up a bit.

 

If the motherboard is good enough to work with all four sticks at 3200 Mhz (and there's no reason it shouldn't be), then you may get a very very small performance boost in some applications if the ram sticks are Dual Rank as the processor can issue commands to each rank separately and work with one rank while the other is busy processing a previous command.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

If the motherboard is good enough to work with all four sticks at 3200 Mhz (and there's no reason it shouldn't be), then you may get a very very small performance boost in some applications if the ram sticks are Dual Rank as the processor can issue commands to each rank separately and work with one rank while the other is busy processing a previous command.

Considering recent posts, I'd be somewhat cautious of four sticks as there stills seems to be some compatibility issues sometimes.  You're still less likely to run into issues with two sticks than four.

[porina]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

If the motherboard is good enough to work with all four sticks at 3200 Mhz (and there's no reason it shouldn't be), then you may get a very very small performance boost in some applications if the ram sticks are Dual Rank as the processor can issue commands to each rank separately and work with one rank while the other is busy processing a previous command.

It may be clearer to think of it in "rank per channel" even though it isn't technically correct. 8GB DDR4 DIMMs have been single rank for a very long time. If you have an older dual rank one, they can give better performance with all else being equal. Having two single rank DIMMs per channel performs essentially the same as a dual rank DIMM per channel.

 

Memory bound applications can see significant increases from more ranks alone, I've seen 25% in Prime95 like applications. For most stuff, the difference will be tiny so not a big thing to worry about.

[freeagent]

I prefer running a dual ranked setup, the performance is outstanding.