Single or paired RAM?

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Bright Flame

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I have one 4gb ram stick, two 2gb ram sticks, 3x 1gb sticks and 4 slots for ram in pc... what is the most efficient combination? 2+2 and 4? 2+2 and 4+1? Something else?
 
Solution
Solandri
Dual channel is highly overrated IMHO. It's impressive in benchmarks, but in real-life tasks it only makes about a 2%-5% difference in processing speed. The vast majority of processor memory requests are actually fulfilled by the multiple caches on the CPU (which is the whole point of having cache).

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188776-how-l1-and-l2-cpu-caches-work-and-why-theyre-an-essential-part-of-modern-chips

Modern CPUs have 32 kB of L1 cache, 256 kB of L2 cache. Those two alone would yield a 99% cache hit rate (i.e. only 1% of memory requests make it through to main memory). But then Intel adds a 1-8 MB L3 cache on top of that. So the speed of main memory to the CPU makes very little difference in real-life use. The...
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Tolis_GR

Tolis_GR

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Considering that you are low on ram memory at any scenario, the best choice would be to run one 4gb + one 2gb of ram to make a total of 6gb. What you may lose with this setup is dual channel configuration. However if your 4 gb and 2 gb are of the same manufacturer and of same type, they may run with dual channel. There is also a possibility that they will not run at all together. Mixing different rams does involve such problems.
 
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Bright Flame

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I don't want to be rude, but could you please read that again? Sorry if I was not clear enough
1x 4gb
2x 2gb (exactly the same (stock))
3x1gb
 
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Tolis_GR

Tolis_GR

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No my bad. I thought you have 2 slots. So put the 2x2 gb to slots of the same color (i.e 1st and 3rd or 2nd and 4th slot). Add your 4 gb to any other slot so you have totally 8 gb of ram which is sufficient for most tasks.
Now you must check what is the rated frequency of your rams. If you have a ram with 1333 mhz, then all of your faster rams will downclock to this frequency.
For example if your 4gb is slower than the 2x2 gb rams, you will be operating with the frequency of your 4gb and vice versa.
So if your remaining 1gb of ram is even slower than any other, just leave it and stay with 4+2+2. Otherwise add your 1 gb. As i said maybe these rams cannot work with each other so you have to check it yourself.
Find the frequencies of your ram and i would explain.
 
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Bright Flame

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I currently have the 2 2gb stick and the 4gb stick installed, first time I added the 4gb one, pc wouldn't launch, haven't heard (about pairing before), but was fine since my second try.
The 4gb one is 1600MHz, and using task managed, I figured the stock ones are 1333MHz.
Now, for the annoying part, each of those 1gb sticks has different manufacturers, so I'll write here the longest and most comprehensible string of numbers and letters from each one:
Kingston: KVR400X64C3A/1G
Samsung: 1GB 1Rx8 PC2 - 6400U - 666 - 12 - ZZ
Adata: DDR 400(3) 1GX16 U-DIMM
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Dual channel is highly overrated IMHO. It's impressive in benchmarks, but in real-life tasks it only makes about a 2%-5% difference in processing speed. The vast majority of processor memory requests are actually fulfilled by the multiple caches on the CPU (which is the whole point of having cache).

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188776-how-l1-and-l2-cpu-caches-work-and-why-theyre-an-essential-part-of-modern-chips

Modern CPUs have 32 kB of L1 cache, 256 kB of L2 cache. Those two alone would yield a 99% cache hit rate (i.e. only 1% of memory requests make it through to main memory). But then Intel adds a 1-8 MB L3 cache on top of that. So the speed of main memory to the CPU makes very little difference in real-life use. The only reason dual channel even makes a 2%-5% speed difference is because main memory is so much slower than cache, that the 0.1% of memory requests which make it to main memory end up bottlenecking the system causing huge wait times.

So yeah your performance would be very slightly better with the RAM in dual channel config (2x2GB + 2x1GB = 6GB total). But the difference is so small that you won't notice it.* Whereas you will notice if you run out of RAM and the system starts using the pagefile on disk. So the 2x2GB + 4GB config Tolis_GR recommended is your best choice.

* An exception would be if you're doing something which results in a large number of requests to main memory (cache misses). This is usually tasks like data compression, and scientific calculations with very large data sets (100+ MB). Which not coincidentally are the real-life tasks where dual channel memory gives the biggest improvement.
 
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Solution
Tolis_GR

Tolis_GR

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Ignore those 1 gb of ram. They will downclock your setup even further. If your 2x2 gb of ram are also 1600 mhz, you can run all of them at 1600 mhz and you ll be fine. You will not be in dual channel with 4 +2x2 gb but this won't affect most of tasks. Maybe dual channel helps in video editing and streaming but nothing special
 
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Bright Flame

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The 1 extra GB of ram would be nice (9gb total), but the speed is the problem if the 'ol sticks... welp, at least I have something to use if I ever want to make a computer. 3GB of slow ram for free is better than buying new ram. :p
 
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