Question (DDR4) 4x8GB at 3000Hz, or 2x8GB at 3600Hz for Gaming?

[Anoraki]

I've been watching memory prices and 4x8 3000Hz and 2x8 3600Hz are about the same price on PcPartPicker. I didn't think that the speed of memory really made a difference, but I found benchmarks that said otherwise. I know most games don't use beyond 16GB, but I'd imagine the extra memory might come in handy when using Photoshop and Unity, or just for future-proofing in-general. Right now I have DDR3 4x8GB at 1333Hz, and the only reason I'm getting new memory is because I'm planning on upgrading my processor to one of the upcoming Ryzen 3000s.

 

[ElectricDynamo]

Of course if you can afford 8×2 3600mHz that would be great as ryzen cpu's highly rely on higher ram speeds. if you use the pc for gaming, you can get 8 GB, but if you can afford 16 GB it would be great. As I said ram speeds have a great effect on ryzen cpu's. So if you're getting ryzen, get higher speed RAM.

 

[Anoraki]

Of course if you can afford 8×2 3600mHz that would be great as ryzen cpu's highly rely on higher ram speeds. if you use the pc for gaming, you can get 8 GB, but if you can afford 16 GB it would be great. As I said ram speeds have a great effect on ryzen cpu's. So if you're getting ryzen, get higher speed RAM.

Thanks, I guess I'll get that. 8GB wouldn't be enough for quite a few games.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Might have trouble running it at 3600 MHz with existing Ryzen chips, no idea what memory support will be like on Ryzen 3000.

 

[Anoraki]

Might have trouble running it at 3600 MHz with existing Ryzen chips, no idea what memory support will be like on Ryzen 3000.

What does that mean?

 

[Gmoney06ss]

Current gen ryzen chips have been shown to have some issues running such high ram speeds. So you may or may not get the posted speed. And you may end up running that 3600 Ram at 3000/3200. Which seems to be the sweet spot for current ryzen. The new chips may very well have better memory control, but we won't know until we actually see them.

 

[Calvin7]

AM4 CPUs are subject to a sharp drop in maximum supported memory clock speed when populating more than two DIMM slots.

 

[TJ Hooker]

What does that mean?

As others have said, current Ryzen chips struggle to run memory at high speeds like 3600 MHz. The next generation of Ryzen chips may improve on this, but no way to know at this point.

 

[CountMike]

Just which Ryzen do you have and on which MB ? 2nd gen Ryzen on a good MB can run memory pretty fast. I have no problem running 3600MHz on my setup although over 3200MHz gets diminishing gains, may improve with 3rd gen Ryzen.