know buying RAM for your computer isn't so easy there's a lot to take into account how much to get what speed you
want and whether it's worth paying a few bucks more to make the inside of your computer look like it's been slathered
in rainbow sherbet
but one specification people don't talk too much about is how many ranks your
RAM modules have and i'm not referring to how many steam achievements you've
unlocked with the same RAM kit if only a memory rank is actually a single group
of memory blocks you see each rank has a 64-bit bus that connects your RAM to
your motherboard and one stick of RAM can have one two or even four ranks on
that one stick generally speaking more ranks are better because your system's
memory controller can access each rank separately from the others while the CPU
can access every rank at once due to the modules themselves sharing the 64-bit
bus it can start an operation on one rank while another rank finishes up on
another task a process called interleaving that can reduce memory
response time and slightly improved bandwidth despite not increasing the bus
width but should you care about this are the performance benefits actually worth
worrying about such an esoteric topic oh
it turns out the answer is yes especially if you're running an AMD
ryzen CPU certain games that are more memory dependent can see noticeable
performance increases when running more ranks of memory and even some
productivity applications like file compression programs can also benefit
and there's more good news you don't necessarily have to go out and buy
special dual rank modules to take advantage of the speed boost many of you
probably have four dimm slots on your motherboard that can operate in dual
channel mode if you fill all four slots with single rank dimms this is roughly
equivalent to a dual rank setup in two slots if you're only rocking two sticks
of RAM this is a situation in which you'll want to have those dual rank
modules but how exactly do you know how many ranks are on your RAM modules ask
them although a common explanation is that single rank memory has chips on
only one side while a dual rank module has memory chips on both sides it can be
hard to tell how many ranks a stick of RAM has just by glancing at it even if
it doesn't have a heat spreader sometimes modules that appear to have
memory chips on both sides actually act as one big rank and then you have the
fact that trying to figure this out in your BIOS or in a system utility doesn't
always give you an accurate answer either some RAM modules will have a 1r
or 2r to indicate whether they're single or dual rank respectively and quad rank
memory is quite unusual on regular desktops so odds are you won't be seeing
too much of it if that isn't too helpful you might try looking at a spec sheet or
checking out online resources where users have compiled lists of single and
dual rank memory kits now it also turns out that because modern memory
integrated circuits or ics tend to be eight gigabit capacity as opposed to the
older standard of four newer eight Gigabyte sticks tend to be single rank
while newer 16 gig sticks tend to be dual rank and if you're confused about
the math there one rank is made up of eight ics
this means that even if you won't use all of it 32 gigabytes of memory may be
the sweet spot for speed today though this will keep changing as ic capacity
increases but remember that whether you see real benefits really depends on your
workload and more ranks can paradoxically add more latency depending
on what you're doing so do your research and see if that trade-off is worth it
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techwiki well what do you know that was a video thanks for watching guys like
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