Question DDR4 2666MHz RAM for DDR4 2400MHz CPU

[jlam55555]

I know variants of this question have been asked before but I to clarify a detail I saw in another post.

I'm looking at some laptops like this Dell Inspiron, which uses a single-channel 8Gb DDR4 2666MHz RAM. The manual states that all configurations supported are 2400MHz, single- or dual-channel. (The Inspiron's i5 8265U processor supports up to DDR4-2400.)

I found this post that listed memory module specs that included the excerpt: "DDR4-2666 bridge to DDR4-2400 dual channel support (i7-8565U, i5-8265U processors)".

The wording on this is a little ambiguous. Does this mean that a single-channel DDR4-2666 can be bridged to a dual-channel DDR4-2400 (and would this have better performance than dual-channel 2400MHz RAM)? Or does this mean that the single channel of DDR4-2666 gets bridged down to a single-channel DDR4-2400 (and if so, why use the 2666MHz RAM in the first place?) And would this likely also apply to the Inspiron, even if it's not in the manual? I'm not too familiar with this "bridging," so please let me know if I'm misunderstanding anything.

 

[RememberThe5th]

Soo just to shorten the story;
If your CPU is locked and supports up to 2400, if the ram is above it will be downclocked by your motherboard to 2400.
For instance my previous CPU i3-4170 supported up to 1600MHz soo my 1866 ram ran at 1600 and limited up to that (on my H81M motherboard).

The things changes when you have a bit better motherboard like I have Z97 and you can overclock ram when your CPU is locked, eg I run 1900MHz even tho my CPU max is 1600.

PS. Im first time hearing this "Bridging mode".

 

[jlam55555]

Soo just to shorten the story;
If your CPU is locked and supports up to 2400, if the ram is above it will be downclocked by your motherboard to 2400.
For instance my previous CPU i3-4170 supported up to 1600MHz soo my 1866 ram ran at 1600 and limited up to that (on my H81M motherboard).

The things changes when you have a bit better motherboard like I have Z97 and you can overclock ram when your CPU is locked, eg I run 1900MHz even tho my CPU max is 1600.

PS. Im first time hearing this "Bridging mode".

By "locked," do you mean similar to overclocking locking? I didn't know that unlocking a CPU had anything to do with RAM speed.

Is the motherboard RAM-overclocking a common thing? Is it likely that this laptop would use it? Do you have a source for this?

And about bridging, this was something I've never heard of either, and it isn't mentioned in the Dell manual I linked above either. I'm just trying to figure out why they would use faster RAM if it wasn't supported. Do you think the motherboard RAM-overclocking is the most likely option?