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8 GB cl 9 vs 16 GB cl 11

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Hello all.

I got an old PC in my office, running windows 10, that currently has 8 GB (2x4) dual channel of DDR3 at 1600mhz and CL 9 latency.

I use this PC mainly for work but occasionally I run some light games on it on some free time (it has an old GTX 970).

Would I benefit on replacing those RAMs for a 16 GB kit (2x8) dual channel also at 1600mhz, but latency CL 11?

I don't know much about RAM so I read about in some pages and the information is not that clear on how much difference (if any at all) this "CL" latency increase would be, if its worth it for the increase in RAM size.
 
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You are not going to see or feel any difference between DDR4-1600 CL9 & CL11 except for slight differences in benchmark scores.
If you are using all of the 8GB and then you start using the page file, you will see a difference between 8GB & 16GB.
If you aren't using the page file for your current 8GB uses, you won't see any difference with 16GB.
 
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Old PC have limits, its not of what you wish, rather of what the specific motherboard model can do.
Does it support over 8GB of RAM? = the first question to be answered.
If this is a motherboard of low price point, it will not do the trick.
 
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Old PC have limits, its not of what you wish, rather of what the specific motherboard model can do.
Does it support over 8GB of RAM? = the first question to be answered.
If this is a motherboard of low price point, it will not do the trick.
Yes it supports up to 32gb at 1600hmz max speed
 
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Yes you will benefit if you have more ram for sure also if you have 4 slots maybe you can keep those 2x4 gb and add this other 2x8 gb it should work without the problem most likely it will work on CL11 but if you know and have unlocked bios on your mobo you can tweak memory timings by yourself.......GL
 
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Yes you will benefit if you have more ram for sure also if you have 4 slots maybe you can keep those 2x4 gb and add this other 2x8 gb it should work without the problem most likely it will work on CL11 but if you know and have unlocked bios on your mobo you can tweak memory timings by yourself.......GL
Do I lose the benefit of "dual channel" if I'm using all 4 RAM slots? And also being that the 4 sticks would not be of the same capacity and timings.
 
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Do I lose the benefit of "dual channel" if I'm using all 4 RAM slots? And also being that the 4 sticks would not be of the same capacity and timings.
No it should work as dual channel....just make sure that same memory works in pair so in short keep them in same slot color(on your mobo) for example those 2x4 should be in same slot-color to work in dual channel and other 2 in other 2 slots of the same color
 
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Would I benefit on replacing those RAMs for a 16 GB kit

That depends on your usage; take a look if you regularly use all 8 GB
 
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At my 1080P gaming : 16GB ... DDR3 2400 = 1GB free ... Win7.

Use windows task manager and read available system RAM when your game this is loaded.
Win10 wastes more RAM for system tasks, than what a well tuned Win7 Pro system will use.
 
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16GB ... DDR3 2400 = 1GB free ... Win7.

LOL! You must have a lot of malware running in the background if you say you only have 1GB free from your 16GB when you play a game...
 
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LOL! You must have a lot of malware running in the background if you say you only have 1GB free from your 16GB when you play a game...
There is no greater malware than Battlefield V.
 
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There is no greater malware than Battlefield V.
BATTLEFIELD V MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
  • OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
  • Processor (AMD): AMD FX-8350.
  • Processor (Intel): Core i5 6600K.
  • Memory: 8GB RAM.
  • Graphics card (NVIDIA): NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 1050 / NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 660 2GB.
  • Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon™ RX 560 / HD 7850 2GB.
 
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At my 1080P gaming : 16GB ... DDR3 2400 = 1GB free ... Win7.

Use windows task manager and read available system RAM when your game this is loaded.
Win10 wastes more RAM for system tasks, than what a well tuned Win7 Pro system will use.

Now check your commit charge. In this case, you'll find that it has exceeded 16 GB by quite a while, you have long since run out of memory if you're only seeing 1 meager GB free while gaming... that's pretty much Windows' emergency reserves. It's hitting the swap file hard, and at that point your experience cannot be guaranteed. It will stutter whether you like it or not...

LOL! You must have a lot of malware running in the background if you say you only have 1GB free from your 16GB when you play a game...

I must say, memory requirements have been climbing steadily recently and developers have been omitting that from their official spec sheets for some time now. With midrange GPUs readily having 12+ GB of memory nowadays, and WDDM's additive memory allocation (it counts allocated VRAM as a memory page, and doubles that down on your commit charge), you're going to find that it's hilariously easy to overwhelm 16 GB of RAM nowadays. I'd recommend 32 GB for a gaming PC that will be used to play AAA games released from 2021 onwards, but 16 will be perfectly adequate for a light gaming PC with a GTX 970 such as OP's, it's not like you'll be playing Forspoken on that ;)

Thankfully, DDR4 32 GB RAM kits are now inexpensive (you can find some as low as $65 these days if you aren't picky about latency), so it shouldn't come off as baffling as it once did.

Do I lose the benefit of "dual channel" if I'm using all 4 RAM slots? And also being that the 4 sticks would not be of the same capacity and timings.

You shouldn't mix the memory sticks, it's going to be tough to configure and stabilize. Grab a 16 GB kit, CL11 is fine, should not be too pricy, and keep your existing memory as a backup :) Have fun.
 
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LOL! You must have a lot of malware running in the background if you say you only have 1GB free from your 16GB when you play a game...

I was starting to get pretty close to full RAM utilization on some games when I had 16GB. 16 GB ain't as much as it once used to seem.
 
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Thankfully, DDR4 32 GB RAM kits are now inexpensive (you can find some as low as $65 these days if you aren't picky about latency), so it shouldn't come off as baffling as it once did.
I got a DDR5 6000Mhz 32GB kit for myself, I'm good. Just haven't noticed a game at 1080p that is using 16GB of ram.
 
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I got a DDR5 6000Mhz 32GB kit for myself, I'm good. Just haven't noticed a game at 1080p that is using 16GB of ram.

1080p helps conserve memory as long as you don't go uuuuultraaaaaa on the asset quality, though. For 1440 and 4K, memory requirements begin to climb a lot esp. if you want to use ray tracing ;)
 
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Now check your commit charge. In this case, you'll find that it has exceeded 16 GB by quite a while, you have long since run out of memory if you're only seeing 1 meager GB free while gaming... that's pretty much Windows' emergency reserves. It's hitting the swap file hard, and at that point your experience cannot be guaranteed. It will stutter whether you like it or not...
Good points, but .. I am after HDD storage upgrade, when cash flow this aloud it.
Two WD gold, along a dedicated SSD just for the swap file.

We all paying the price in money due the poor work of software developers.
Bad written games which cause system memory leakage and or at long time gaming, the cache grow with out limit.
And we have on top of that, the poor job of Microsoft, the gaming workstation has dynamic RAM loads, when the average server does not load and unload huge chunks of RAM.

Few smart IT, they did think to investigate windows memory handling, all that they succeed was to spot the problem, but there is no fix.
So we have to buy huge storage media, along plenty of RAM for us to keep the monster in control.
 
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