SOLVED Does using 3 out of 4 DIMM slots reduce performance?

[Pigmen]

I have a Z77 motherboard with 4 DIMM slots with a 2600k CPU, i currently have 2 sticks of 4GB installed out of the 4 slots available and I'm considering to buy another stick of 4GB to install it in, will that degrade my performance since this motherboard runs memory on dual-channel instead of a single channel memory?

 

[Automata]

It would not run in dual channel, so it would degrade memory performance. Are you using enough RAM to fill the 8 GB you currently have (>80%)?

 

[Pigmen]

yea it will go above 80% and sometimes crashes my desktop as im running minecraft and a minecraft server which uses a whole lot of memory T_T, so best that i get a dual channel kit instead of one?

 

[redduc900]

If you were to buy an 8GB module instead of 4GB, then you could still retain a dual-channel config. w/ 8GB in each channel.

 

[Pigmen]

yea ok so my best bet would be the 2x4GB kit i guess, if anyone has anymore info that i need to know please tell me! thx!

 

[jiggamanjb]

If you need the RAM then the performance drop from losing dual channel may not be an issue. Dual channel vs single channel performance in real world testing is almost negligible except in benchmarks and programs extremely demanding of RAM bandwidth.