I'm facing a bit of a dilemma with my ASUS Z790 Prime motherboard. One of the RAM slots is damaged, so I can either run my RAM at 6000 MHz in single channel mode, or at 4000 MHz in dual channel mode. Performance in Cinebench is relatively similar for both setups, but I'm trying to figure out which option would be better for gaming. I'm using an Intel i5-12600K with an Arc A580 graphics card and have 16 GB of DDR5 RAM running at 6000/30.
2 Answers
Cinebench scores don't really reflect memory performance since it's not particularly sensitive to that. When it comes to gaming, memory bandwidth is crucial, which means you should consider the impact of both memory speed and bus width. Essentially, for the single channel at DDR5-6000 to match the dual channel at DDR5-4000, you'd need to push it up to DDR5-8000. But you might want to test other benchmarks like Linpack or Y-Cruncher for a more accurate comparison.
If you can only use the A1 and B1 slots due to the bad slot, running the RAM in dual channel at 4000 should work fine for gaming. However, given how DDR5 works on these boards, the XMP profile is limited if you're not using A2 or B2 slots. It's a bit of a strange limitation, but it’s good to keep in mind. Your gaming experience shouldn't be drastically different, but optimizing memory setup is always wise if you have the option.
Thanks for clarifying! It sounds like even with the limitations, dual channel at 4000 is a solid choice. Just may not see the same performance boost as a dual channel at a higher speed. It’s nice to know I'm not missing out too much with my current setup.
Got it! So those benchmarks would probably show the dual channel setup at 4000 MHz performing better than single channel at 6000 MHz. There’s been some buzz on YouTube about how gaming performance isn’t hugely impacted by the type of RAM setup, which got me wondering if I should stick with dual channel at 4000 MHz during the current RAM shortages.