Testing with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which is a very CPU demanding game, we find that the 3900X saw a 14% increase in average frame rate when going from 2 modules to 4, that's a very significant improvement, though note we're using an extreme GPU at a low resolution. We've only tested using two games as that's all the data we need to clear up any misconceptions you might have regarding 4 sticks with Zen 3 versus other CPUs. Our test system has been equipped with the GeForce RTX 3090 and here comes our comparison of the Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 9 3900X and Core i9-10900K when using two DDR4-3200 modules vs. But what all this means is, yes, it's possible for four modules to improve performance over two modules in a dual-channel system. How much of an impact this has on performance depends on the application and the memory controller's ability to take advantage of open pages. Although the ranks can't be accessed simultaneously, they can be accessed independently, and this means the controller can send write data to one rank, while it waits for read data previously selected from another rank and as you'll see soon, this greatly increases memory bandwidth. This can give the four DIMM module configuration an advantage as it allows several open DRAM pages in each rank. However, when using four single rank modules for dual-channel operation, the memory is now configured as a dual rank. So when using two single ranked modules for dual-channel operation, the memory is configured as a single rank. In fact, there's very little difference between one dual ranked module and two single-rank modules when connected to the same memory controller, even though the memory chips reside on different PCBs. A system populated with more than two single ranked modules will actually act as if dual ranked modules are installed. Where things can get even more confusing is when you introduce more memory sticks or modules. A module with chips on both sides of the PCB is really just dual-sided, and can still be a single ranked module, so it's a bit confusing. Typically, single rank modules feature all the memory chips on one side of the PCB, while dual rank memory places chips on both sides of the PCB. Identifying if your memory is dual or single rank can be difficult as software doesn't always read modules correctly and not all memory manufacturers note the rank in the modules' ID. Most consumer-grade memory features a single rank, though higher capacity modules are usually dual rank, while server-grade memory is often quad-rank. It boils down to how the memory is configured, or rather the memory "rank." For those of you unaware, the term 'rank' means the number of 64-bit memory banks on a module. Now before we jump into our updated testing, here's a very brief explanation of why 4 sticks are faster than 2. Certainly not massive gains, but this is relatively slow memory and we expected that the margins would grow a little with faster memory. This was seen with both AMD and Intel processors. We found that when using rather slow DDR4-3000 CL16 memory, we were looking at a 3-5% performance uplift for the average frame rate at 1080p using an RTX 2080 Ti, but also gains as high as 10% when looking at the 1% low results. But before we get into it, it's important we establish a reference based on previous testing and insights.Įarlier this year we compared Intel's Core i9-9900K and Ryzen 9 3900X using two 8GB modules versus four 4GB modules using the exact same memory timings. In this article we'll be searching for Zen 3's memory sweet spot and looking at DDR4 memory performance with the new Ryzen 5000 CPU series.
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