*Help would be appreciated* Upgrading from 8 to 16 GB RAM caused a decrease in FPS

helzus

Reputable
Jul 19, 2014
8
0
4,510
After installing two additional sticks of Corsair Vengeance Pro Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1866 MHZ (PC3 15000) Desktop Memory (4 of the exact same RAM in total adding up to a grand total of 16 GB RAM), my overall FPS in Wildstar dropped by 10-30 frames everywhere, with random ups and downs. I did check my BIOs, the latency and voltage are correct. Anyone have a solution to this? I don't really understand how adding RAM would decrease performance. I've even removed 8 GB to test it out, and Wildstar ran more smoothly with a 10-30 FPS increase.

My specs:
Intel Core i7-4770K
MSI Z87 GD65 GAMING Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance Pro Series DDR3 1866 MHZ
EVGA GEFORCE GTX 780 3 GB

Tested both the old set and the new 8 GB sets individually, both run at the approximate same FPS. But when I run them together, Wildstar drops 30 FPS.

Old 8 GB: ~105 FPS
New 8 GB: ~105 FPS (Same slots as old ones, 1 and 3)
16GB: ~75-80 FPS
8 GB in previously unused sockets: ~95-100 FPS (Slots 2 and 4)
 
Any time you mix RAM sticks, you can get weird results. Even if they're identical in every other respect, if they weren't binned together and sold as a set they're much more likely to not get along with each other. Doesn't mean they won't work, although many mixes WILL cause boot issues, but even if they work together, they may not work well.

In your case, you're obviously better off using one or the other sets but not both. You can keep mixing in new sticks and hope to get lucky, but if you want 16GB working to max potential, you're better off buying a matched set of 2 x 8GB or 4 x 4GB. 4x4 will be cheaper usually, but 2 x 8 will put less stress on your memory controller.