Mismatch memory speed differances

[krypticos]

ill start off by saying, sorry i didnt search for a thread on this because i couldnt think what it would be called.

so what i am wanting to know is if i take an 8gb and a 2gb memory modules and put them in to my mac how much of a speed difference would there be vs 2x8gb sticks. the reason i ask is because instead of upgrading my mac mini to 16gb of ram i was thinking of taking one of my 8gb sticks out of my macbook pro and swapping it with one of the 2gb stick in the mini so both would have 10gb of ram.

Thanks for you time and help

 

[snaky69]

ill start off by saying, sorry i didnt search for a thread on this because i couldnt think what it would be called.

so what i am wanting to know is if i take an 8gb and a 2gb memory modules and put them in to my mac how much of a speed difference would there be vs 2x8gb sticks. the reason i ask is because instead of upgrading my mac mini to 16gb of ram i was thinking of taking one of my 8gb sticks out of my macbook pro and swapping it with one of the 2gb stick in the mini so both would have 10gb of ram.

Thanks for you time and help

In artificial benchmarks you'll see a 10-15% difference in memory speed as it would lose dual channel ability.

In real, actual, day to day use? You'd be hard pressed to notice.

 

[Freyqq]

In artificial benchmarks you'll see a 10-15% difference in memory speed as it would lose dual channel ability.

In real, actual, day to day use? You'd be hard pressed to notice.

Basically this. RAM speed is rarely the bottleneck for performance.

 

[damuse]

Put it this way: with 2x2 GB mavericks was churning virtual and compressed memory badly on my 2012 13" MBP doing fairly basic stuff. Responsiveness got pretty bad.

Replaced one stick with an 8GB module, and it's been smooth sailing ever since.

Memory mismatch and losing dual channel doesn't matter much when the system's starving for real memory.