Ryzen 5600X - 2 or 4 Ram sticks?

I watched this video where Steve from GN explains that 4 sticks of Ram performs better than 2 sticks on 5600X and he also says that Wendell confirmed this.

So I am a bit puzzled now what kind of ram should I get to get the maximum performance out of 5600X?

Thanks.

Did Steve ever make a follow-up video? He had alluded to covering “the solution” in the next video. Reading the comments, the performance gains appear to come from the number of total ranks, rather than the number of sticks alone. I believe the magic number is two double sided sticks or four single sided sticks, for a total of 4 ranks.

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Yeah, also I think Steve mispoke when he said @wendell telling him that two single rank 16GB sticks were best.
What he meant to say was two dual rank 16GB sticks are best. (Correct me if I’m wrong though…)

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If you can clock 2xDR as high as 2xSR, then DR will be faster because interleaving.
Also there is almost never a reason to 4xSR instead 2xDR. Compatibility might be the only one that comes to mind.

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this is correct. What I was excited about, though, was getting 2x16gb SR to work @ 4000 IF with CL14. Which is DARN FAST. :smiley:

Yeah, but is DARN FAST fast enough? :wink:

its misleading because you can go from 169 fps @ 1080p in SOTR to 199 fps with no changes other than ranks and timings to your memory, but the same in more gpu limited scenarios is more like 2% and not 15% …

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Magic I tell you :wink:

I don’t really care about fps as long as its above 60, prefere silence :). However, for some time now, all I’m working with usually fits into RAM buffers, so I expect it will become even more important to have faster access to it.

We will probably see next year if DDR5 will give us some step up.

With the heat spreaders on gaming ram, how do you know the rank? Is that info commonly published? I know I see it a lot for server ram.

Is a 32GB stick pretty likely to be 2r? So a 64gb kit would be the magic 4r?

Wendell, have you done anything in depth on Ranking and Channel performance on the 5000 series?

I am wondering what performance may be better on a 4 slot Dual Channel system. 4xSR, 2xDR, or 4xDR.

Manufacturers sometimes have this information. I was checking some sticks other day and Kingston had it, while Team Group didnt.

But usually it comes down to manufacturing restrictions. Usually biggest sticks for the current platform will be all DR, because memory dies have limited capacity. So now probably all 32GB and most 16Gb sticks will be DR, but many 8GB will be SR.

Edit: Oh, and also you can figure this out by counting bits :slight_smile: Communication between CPU and memory is going over 64 bit bus. So if you have detailed info about dies you can deduce if its 64bit (SR) or 2x64bit (DR). In the past also QR 4x64 was a thing, but died quickly.

QR is still a thing in the Enterprise world. Really big modules are quad rank, but I doubt anything consumer level would accept an 128GB module or larger.

Yeah, maybe next Threadripper boards. Consumer is all 32GB for now, unless I missed something. Maybe some ITX with 2 banks, but Im not really into these :wink:

Can you recommend some g.skill (or other brand) modules that fit all the above specifications and that will perform the best with Ryzen 5600X? Thanks.

Do you think RAM comparability will significantly increase in the next weeks? My DDR4 4000CL17 won’t go higher than 3200 and I more or less made up my mind to go with 3600CL16 instead.

@gordonthree You can have a look when you get them. DR has modules on both sides, SR only on one.

I wish the Ryzen 7 5800X were cheaper. That’s honestly the CPU I kinda want to go for.

Sure, look for DDR4, size, fequency and CL you want, and then sort by price. Cheapest is the one to go with.

Also best to go with 2 sticks kit, unless you need more than 64GB.

Edit: Oh, you may check QVL listings of mobo and memory vendors. They show what they supposedly tested. But they probably test maybe 1 board and copypasta that for others.

I cannot stress checking the QVL - like @misiektw has mentioned - enough. You may avoid yourself some trouble :wink:

Yup, happened to me once that seller wouldn’t accept RMA because memory wasnt on QVL, so its not compatible. And he sold me that fuken thing together with mobo. Of course I tested it in another box and showed him FU, but if someone has only one PC around it may be difficult.

But it was in early Ryzen days, plenty memory issues back then. So they got slick, probably because plenty RMA’s.

Thankfully its not really an issue anymore.

Anyway, what I was about to say, standard is JEDEC 2666 MT/s, and it will work, unless bad memory.
Everything else is state sanctioned OC.

Well, imho XMP settings must be possible. Otherwise, it’s back to the seller.