I have a Ryzen 7 3700X and a Radeon RX 5700 XT, and I'm deciding between using one 8GB DDR4-3200 CL16 stick or two 8GB DDR4-2400 sticks. I mainly play games at 1080p. Which setup would provide better overall gaming performance?
3 Answers
Dual-channel is the key advantage here. A single stick doesn’t run at half its advertised speed—the memory still operates at its rated data rate, but single-channel mode provides roughly half the memory bandwidth. In practice, 16GB at 2400 will usually beat 8GB at 3200 for this system.
The 3700X and 5700 XT can benefit from faster RAM, but dropping from 16GB to 8GB is a much bigger drawback for modern gaming. Run both modules if they’re stable together, and consider replacing them with a matched 2x8GB or 2x16GB 3200 MT/s kit later.
Yes. Make sure the system recognizes 16GB and is actually running in dual-channel mode. If the modules have different specifications, the motherboard may use the slower stick’s settings.
Use both 8GB sticks. Having 16GB in dual-channel mode will generally be better than 8GB in single-channel mode, even if the memory runs at 2400 MT/s. The extra capacity also helps prevent stuttering in newer games and during normal background tasks.
So the best choice for now is the two 8GB sticks, even though they’re slower?