Is single channel 2400mhz 8gb ram that bad?

[jerickodg98]

Is 1x8gb, 2400mhz RAM enough for Ryzen 3 2200g? I only play League of Legends, Dota 2, Paladins, and Csgo. I'll use the system unit for schoolworks as well. Is it that bad even though its a single channel? I plan to play games at 720p or 1080p at a high resolution if possible. Is it?

 

[CRO5513Y]

In general, depends on the CPU/Tasks. With your CPU/Tasks, definitely. Ryzen's performance can suffer greatly from slow and single channel memory, this is even more true with the Ryzen APUs such as the 2200G you listed. As both the CPU and GPU will be using the RAM and you'll defintiely want a dual channel kit and preferably a faster speed, but 2400 MHz isn't as much as a problem as single channel is. I recommend you try find a 2x4GB kit, they shouldn't cost that much more. As for speed, ideally 2800-3200 MHz is a good pairing with Ryzen but if your budget is that strictly limited, at least get a dual channel kit over faster speed. Hope this helps!

 

[das_stig]

Yes, 2400Mhz single or dual on a 2200G is bad, memory is shared with main system, so you should be looking at getting a minimum of 2x4GB kit DDR4-2933Mhz or better. Gaming these days is also starting to creep towards 16GB or RAM.

Gaming on the 2200G will probably be OK at 720, with details turned down, but could be nasty at 1080.

 

[cryoburner]

Yeah, single channel tends to really hurt the performance of integrated graphics in general, as can memory speeds, to a lesser extent. The difference between DDR4-2400 and 3000 can affect performance of the integrated graphics by around 15% or so. Going from dual-channel to single channel can cut performance by about another 40% though. So, between the two, you might be looking at around half the graphics performance of the same processor tested on a system with two sticks of higher speed memory.

And really, it's likely not worth saving a few bucks on memory just to halve your graphics performance. A 2 x 4GB kit of DDR4-2400 costs around the same price, or maybe about $5 more than a single 8GB stick of the same speed. Or for about an additional $5, you could move up to a 2 x 4GB kit of DDR4-2666 or 2800. And it's not much more for DDR4-3000. At the very least, a 2 x 4GB dual-channel kit would almost certainly be worth the extra $5 or so.

If you're considering upgrading to more memory in the future, you might also look at a motherboard with 4 memory slots, which again, generally don't cost much more than one with only two RAM slots available.