Question Should I use single-channel 24GB of ram or dual-channel 16GB of ram?

[Falxyar]

Hello, this is my first time ever in any forum asking anything in all my life, so please, forgive my ignorance, I would just like a direct answer on what I should be doing.

Here's the situation.

I've been slowly upgrading my PC over the years, started with most of the stuff I've got, and slowly, but poorly, upgraded some here and there, but kept some stuff from many years ago, here are my specs:

Gigabyte 970A-D3P REV 2.0
Sapphire RX580 Nitro+ 8GB GDDR5 256BIT
AMD FX-8350
HYPERX FURY BLUE 2X4GB 1600mhz(800mhz)
EVGA 500B

I know these are all old components, paired with somewhat newer ones, but hey... I'm from a fourth world country, I do what I can with what I've got.

I recently bought more RAM, bought a pair of 2x8GB HYPERX FURY BLACK 1600mhz(800mhz).

A friend explained what dual-channel was, and ever since I started using my 2x4 in that mode, I gotta be honest, I didn't really saw much change, maybe too many years using the same KIT of ram, or perhaps I was already using them in dual-channel and didn't know.

Should I install all 4 modules in their respective slots for dual-channel, and would this produce my 24GB of ram to be running as if all is dual-channel? I'm assuming not, because they're not from the same KIT, obviously.

Or

Should I just use my new 16GB as dual-channel and have a better performance as that, instead of with those 24GB (maybe) running at single-channel?

I would greatly appreciate any responses, thank you so much in advance, have a great day whoever reads this.

Greetings from Venezuela.

 

[thx1138v2]

Unless you are running into problems of using 100% of your DRAM, forcing the system to swap some RAM to disk I would go with the 2 module 16GB option.

DDR stands for Double Data Rate. That is achieved by transferring data across the data bus on both the rising and falling edges of the DRAM clock signal. That's how an 800MHz clock signal can appear to be 1600MHz.

Dual channel memory makes that data bus appear to be twice as wide. Each module has a 64 bit data bus but in dual channel mode that bus appears to be 128 bits wide so those transfers contain twice as much data for each transfer.

There is, however, a lot more that goes into apparent speed of a system than the DRAM transfer speeds so you may not notice a lot of difference.

 

[Falxyar]

So, should I use the 16GBs because it will effectively give me a better performance with the dual channel, than having 24GBs of single? I would run tests, and I can obviously use some benchmarks, but as most games won't even come close to those 24GBs of ram, I can't for real test that in a single experience in which I would actually see that change, since either way, it won't use it all up.

Do you have any suggestions on this? Any good benchmark that's reliable and free? Because I've seen great ones, but sadly I can't pay for them.

Thanks so much for your answer, I think I understood most of it, and I'm understanding that I would have 24GB at 800mhz, which would be worse than just having 16gb at 1600mhz, is that right?