2 sticks or 4 sticks of DDR4 for better performance?

lettuce · 14 Dec 2022 at 08:58

For my up coming build I want a total of 32GB of memory (B550, 5800X or 5800X3D and DDR4 3600). Would I get better performance form using 2x 16gb sticks or 4x 8gb sticks?. Would system stability be greater going with 1 option over the other?

eddiew · 14 Dec 2022 at 10:08

Always just two sticks if you're tweaking for performance.

Four increases the load on the memory controller and is kind of a recipe for instability and being forced onto lower frequencies or higher latencies.

lettuce · 14 Dec 2022 at 10:34

Great thanks. 2 sticks it is then.

Wing-Man · 14 Dec 2022 at 11:19

eddiew said:
Always just two sticks if you're tweaking for performance.

Wrong. 5600 5700 and 5800 like 4 sticks and do perform better with 4.

lettuce said:
Would system stability be greater going with 1 option over the other?

the chips you have listed like to run 4 sticks, but there can always be a problem with 4, 2 or even 1 stick
Try to find dual rank ram and 2 sticks will perform just as good in day to day tasks

lettuce · 14 Dec 2022 at 11:46

So I'll will get higher frame rates in games using 4 sticks over 2?.

Also what's dual rank ram??

This was the memory I was going to get.... Corsair vengeance

Wing-Man · 14 Dec 2022 at 12:05

Just get the two sticks buddy. All will be good.

There is real work gains to be had from 4 sticks but based on budget ram. Put the extra money into a higher spec cpu or gpu at time of building

Dg834man · 14 Dec 2022 at 13:07

Would get this 8Pack

Tetras · 15 Dec 2022 at 14:52

lettuce said:
Also what's dual rank ram??

The dual rank RAM has 2 ranks of 8 chips (16 in total), on one stick, which was necessary to make 16GB sticks when they had a density of 8Gbit (1GB per chip). The memory controller can optimise memory access with dual rank memory, which allows it to be slightly faster (in most circumstances) if you have 2 dual rank sticks in dual channel mode, than 2 single rank sticks in dual channel mode. The downside is that dual rank sticks usually achieve lower frequencies and require more voltage than single rank sticks. AMD and Intel de-rate their CPUs memory spec (max frequency) the more sticks and ranks you have, so 2 is usually less problematic, but using 4 8GB or 16GB sticks is generally fine with modern AM4 and 1200/1700 DDR4 systems. Since DDR4 has transitioned to 16Gbit memory, dual rank memory is getting much rarer than it used to be, but 32GB sticks are still dual rank.

lsg1r · 15 Dec 2022 at 20:43

I'd go 2 sticks in most cases if I'm not maxing out the board... better option if you ever think of increasing ram. Daft as this might sound but some games are now starting to recommend 32GB of ram so keeping that option to increase the ram easily is always a good thing imo.

Having said that I can say quite happily that on a b550 with a 5950x I can run 4x32GB 3600c18 sticks using it's xmp profile (corsair vengeance lpx) and it performs no different to 2x32GB 3600c18 (yes that is 128gb of ram, I do 3D design as well).... at least in my case anyway.

IIRC 400 series boards would restrict 4 sticks to 3200mhz, while 2 sticks could do 3600mhz... so this might be some of the reasoning behind using 2 sticks instead of 4 for AMD.
The only thing that might make a difference (and this is minor) is timings, you might be able to get a faster cas rating on 8GB sticks versus 16GB sticks but it's hardly worth the effort imo.