ddr4 4000mhz 2x8 vs 3600 2x16 dual vs single rank FOR GAMING

[XenatR]

Hi guys,

building a new pc around the 12700k and probably a B660m Mortar

Purely for gaming performance, which will be better?



4000mhz cl16 2x8gb

or

3600mhz cl16 2x16gb ( Kingston Fury Renegade [ ‎KF436C16RB1K2/32 - dual rank i'm pretty sure] )



I've seen youtube tests where the dual rank 2x16gb gets higher fps lows, but they seem to only test the same memory speeds



cheers!

 

[dasa]

12700K often wont run over 3600 1:1 and has a latency hit running outside of 1:1 so I think that 3600 dual rank would be best especially if you want to set XMP and forget about it.
DDR5 can also help some games a fair bit.
Although you may be better of with 5800X3D or 7700X for gaming.

 

[Keljian]

2 sticks will always be better than one, dual rank will always have slightly more bandwidth. Does it matter? not to me.

 

[eddie500]

You definitely want the dual rank (not talking about dual channel here obviously), I was researching this a lot a while back and it seemed the way to go so I spent the time to find dual rank memory and had to go to microcenter and visually verify it had memory modules on both sides of the memory.

When I finally converted my memory to dual rank, which is hard to find in 16x2 packages these days, my benchmarks were off the charts better in 3dmark. I really recommended the dual rank and its well worth it for gaming as I have found out.

If you can find the dual rank, definitely buy it. Its hard to find in DDR4 as most have converted to single rack and don't tell you what you are buying.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

FWIW, 4 sticks of single rank will perform just as well as 2 sticks of dual rank (at least on Ryzen 5000). Not too sure about Intel, I would have to look at charts again, but I believe the same would hold true.

 

[eddie500]

FWIW, 4 sticks of single rank will perform just as well as 2 sticks of dual rank (at least on Ryzen 5000). Not too sure about Intel, I would have to look at charts again, but I believe the same would hold true.

Possibly, but you would have to make sure the sticks are matched.

I had lots of issues running 4 sticks of ram and had to lower my memory timings to get it to work. I wound up returning 2 sticks. It was a nightmare and I'll never try and use 4 sticks again.
yes, it is possible if you buy a matched set it will work fine, but if you have 2 sticks and are adding 2 more, it could be a nightmare and you will have to lower timings a lot to get it to run.

 

[III_Slyflyer_III]

Possibly, but you would have to make sure the sticks are matched.

I had lots of issues running 4 sticks of ram and had to lower my memory timings to get it to work. I wound up returning 2 sticks. It was a nightmare and I'll never try and use 4 sticks again.
yes, it is possible if you buy a matched set it will work fine, but if you have 2 sticks and are adding 2 more, it could be a nightmare and you will have to lower timings a lot to get it to run.

For sure, mine were a set of B-die sticks meant for Quad-Channel HEDT motherboards (so 4 in the pack). Never combine sticks from different packs these days if speed and stability is the goal.

 

[dasa]

Motherboard also matters. To run 4 sticks at high speeds you want at least a 6 layer PCB with budget MB being 4 layers.
Running 4 dual rank sticks together is significantly harder on the memory controller than 4 single rank.

Mixing RAM brands, packs, sticks is fine as long as you know exactly what chips you are getting and to a lesser extent what style PCB they are on A0, A1, A2 ect.
Mixing chips is not ideal and can create problems and some PCB are better than others.

 

[rhkcommander959]

Most games didn't care about the frequencies so much, especially at 4K including games that DO benefit. Most games it didn't make a difference at all, and the ones where it did it mattered more on the lower resolutions like 1080p, 1440p.

I wish I could find the article I saw that reflected this well, they tested DDR4 and DDR5 from 2133 up to 6000 or so on many titles, not all just gaming.

If you're only getting 2 sticks of either kit, I'd go 2x16. I've ran out of memory many times at 12GB and nearly at 16GB! Not necessarily just from gaming, but still. More future proof with 32GB, I've never had a problem with the 32GB or 64GB systems

 

[dasa]

Most games didn't care about the frequencies so much, especially at 4K i

How much they care about RAM speed doesn't change as the resolution goes up, the only thing that changes is you become GPU bottlnecked as resolution typically has no impact on CPU performance just GPU and unless you have insufficient VRAM then RAM speed only effects CPU performance.
If you had a powerful enough GPU to remove the GPU bottlneck completely then then there would be non change in FPS between 720P or 4k and as such CPU\RAM scaling would remain.

The way I like to look at it when buying is not how many average FPS you gain at 4k from higher RAM speed but is there some games that drop below my target FPS in places due to a lack of CPU power at 720P and there is a number of games I play that do drop below 60FPS which do benefit in at least some parts of the game from higher RAM speed even at 4k.
Maybe a lack of GPU power still hides this benefit in a lot of games as the resolution goes up but the goal is to one day get a GPU and CPU that keeps these games over 60FPS minimum and preferably 120FPS minimum.

As for reviews showing a lack of benefit from higher RAM speed in general this is true for running at XMP as sub timings go out the window as frequency increase unless you dial them in manually which takes a lot more time than most are willing to put in when overclocking.
If sub timings are dialed in the gains from higher RAM speed can add up substantially.

 

[daglesj]

Alway remember seeing folks putting up their dual channel bandwidth and latency benches back around 2015-2018 and then I'd put in my quad channel X99 DDR4 3200 figues and it would be WTF!?!

Still holds up reasonably well today.