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I recently bought a new gaming laptop that comes with a single Ripjaws 16Gb stick. I've heard that having dual channel memory can actually boost your performance by about 7% or higher.

I'm thinking of adding a 4Gb stick of the same brand and specs for about $30. Would this be worth it? I've heard that mismatching RAM capacities can have negative effects.

(By the way, keep in mind that this gaming laptop has an i7-6700HQ which will only support RAM speeds of 2133MHz since that is all it will recognize. Although the 16Gb stick is 2400MHz, it's running @ 2133MHz.)

Current 16 Gb Stick: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017UC3UFC 4 Gb Stick for dual-channel upgrade: https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Ripjaws

| Hypothetically, if CPU-Z where to say the 4Gb stick is running in dual-channel mode with the 16Gb, would this mean only 4Gb would be used as dual-channel? I personally owned a separate laptop that had a 4Gb/2Gb RAM setup using dual channel. I've been told Asymmetric Dual-channel isn't as good as symmetric, but for 30 bucks is it worth?

Burgi
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SapphireMedal
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2 Answers2

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You need to make sure the system supports asymmetric x-channel mode. If yes, you'll probably not gain anything performance-wise, if not you'll loose quite a bit of it.

This is because system can operate same memory amount in x-channel out of each module. So, at worst you'll end up with 20 GB of RAM in single-channel mode, at best with 8GB in x-channel (2x4GB) and remaining 12GB in single-channel.

Keep in mind that "quite a lot of it" is maybe 15% difference. It's not enough to notice, especially since your stated use is for gaming. In that case simply more memory is better.

EDIT:

Just remembered: this is a gaming laptop. Did you ever wonder why they put 1x16GB instead of 2x8GB? If not, maybe you should?

Just sayin'....

EDIT2:

Ok, since you have 8GB of VRAM in this system I'm actually thinking that last thing you want is to add another 4GB. My Advice is to scrap the idea, as it will do more harm than good performance-wise, but all things being subjective you'll see the difference in benchmarks only. If you really worry about system underperforming in video editing area add another 16GB, or - if budget is of some importance - convert it to 2x8GB. CPU is - as noted - with dual-channel memory controller, so either 2x8GB or 2x16 GB. If you want to expand RAM later, add another dual channel kit and you're golden.

As for your hypothetical question you added - it's already covered in my answer above (the "at best" part).

AcePL
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Post #8 Explains it best: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/4gb-dual-channel-2-2-vs-6gb-single-channel-4-2.714532/

I'll go ahead and do a benchmark on both dual and single to see if its worth or not.

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