Different RAM Part Number

[Jace_Harbas]

I was telling my friend that Im having some bottleneck issues on my PC and i got this software to see my PC hardware. I looked under the RAM tab, and i have 16GB 1x8, and 2x4. and i bought them at a different time. The Part numbers are different and he says it hurts my performance. please explain how!

 

[LowlySkeleton]

What your friend is trying to tell you is that your system might be running in single channel due to that single module of 8GB ram.

I am assuming your motherboard has 4 slots for ram. The 2x4GB ram, if installed in the same color slots, should have been running in dual channel configuration. When you installed that extra module of 8GB of ram, it was probably put into an available slot of a different color. At this point, it is quite likely that your system is forced to run your ram in single channel configuration. In theory, this would half the memory bandwidth and affect performance.

However, we know that this is only in THEORY. You can find many tests and benchmarks done online that demonstrates that the actually real world performance loss or gain is only very slight. This is why some budget builds will run a 1x8GB just to save on costs.

What would worry me, though, is that you have different sizes of ram mixed in. Differences in brand, individual chips, sizes and latency in ram modules may result in them not work nicely together and may even cause errors and BSOD. It might be worth while to run Memtest to diagnose any potential errors.

 

[Karadjgne]

Sorta. For years now ram gets run in a hybrid, If the 2x4Gb are run in dual channel, they'll stay in dual channel configuration, while the third stick will run in single channel. Dual channel mode will run upto @20% better than single channel, but that's usually only on ram intensive apps like some rendering or production apps. For most games it doesn't make a difference anymore since the capability of the ram is faster than it can dish it back out.
Ram can be iffy, especially when mixing kits, but if it's working, bios reads it, windows reads it, then generally there's no issue. Having 16Gb of ram is a little much, but considering the alternative of just 8Gb, you are ahead of the curve. Most all apps and games will max out ram usage somewhere between 6-12Gb, so 16Gb is fine and usually recommended.

It's not your bottleneck.