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I tried gaming on one stick of RAM - here's how it went
PC gaming has never been more popular, but at the same time, it's also never been harder to enter as a complete newcomer. A large part of the recent difficulty is due to the recent DRAM shortage, which is said to be caused by manufacturers reallocating their supply towards more lucrative HBM memory for AI.
No matter what the cause is, the current situation is terrible for PC gamers. Anyone looking to build a new rig is stuck paying exorbitant prices for less RAM than they'd otherwise choose to have. It got me thinking: is the gaming performance on one stick of RAM good enough to compromise until prices stabilize? The short answer is: kind of, but it really depends on what you plan to play.
The single-stick gambit
Prices favor it at the moment
A DDR5 kit of 32GB 6000Mhz is still upwards of $400, while one stick of 16GB can be found for around $160. Don't get me wrong, paying almost $200 for one stick of 16GB is still insane, but for some, it might make a bit of sense. If you're really sticking close to a budget or just don't want to pay these inflated prices, but still want to game in the meantime, one stick might seem like a decent compromise. The prices currently favor this approach, but is the performance enough to justify it?
The test
64 GB never felt so good
For some quick and dirty control tests, I ran a handful of games that varied in how they stress my hardware. I currently have a Ryzen 7 7800X3D and an RX 9070 XT, paired with 64 GB of Crucial (RIP) DDR5-6000. For both tests, I ran these titles at the same settings, which are set to what I have them at normally. For someone that almost never looks at RAM usage anymore, I was shocked to see how much was being used during gameplay for some of these titles. Escape From Tarkov for example, saw my system RAM usage spike up to well over 45 GB. Perhaps an indication of what's to come.
The results
Not horrible
I then took out 3 sticks of RAM from my rig, leaving just one 16GB stick slotted in. If you plan to do this yourself, be sure to consult your motherboard manual for which slot to use in the case of running a single stick, because it can vary.
Starting with Battlefield 6, my average framerate on one stick was actually pretty close to my framerate on four, hovering around 100 FPS. Compared to my performance on 4, this looks pretty promising, though the 1% and 0.1% lows really suffered. I was seeing drops well below 60 FPS in both the synthetic benchmark map I used, and genuine online play.
Escape From Tarkov was the one title I expected performance to suffer in, but I didn't expect it to just crash outright. Loading into a match on the PvP servers took much longer than it normally does after accounting for matching, around 5 minutes total. After finally finishing the loading process, the game just outright crashed. It crashed so badly that Steam also crashed, and gave me a message that it needed to repair the Steam service. I tried once more, but got the same result again. I do remember playing this game just fine on 16 GB a few years ago, so I'm not exactly sure what the problem is, but suffice to say, this is an epic fail.
Next, I ran GTA V to show that last-gen titles should be just fine with this configuration, and my hunch was correct. I was getting around 70-80 FPS on average, compared to my control result of well over 140. Despite using the Enhanced Edition and the average framerate being a bit lower, I really didn't see a significant difference. Both experiences are more than playable, and the 1% and 0.1% lows on 16 GB were high enough to be a non-issue.
Finally, Cyberpunk 2077, a slightly more modern title than GTA V, but still open-world, something that should be a little heavier on memory. Running at 4K, with FSR4 on "Quality", I saw framerates of around 40-50 FPS on average, with the 1% lows coming in at around the 30 mark. Compared to my usual framerate of over 140, this is a pretty significant drop, but it's still playable for the most part. If you were to turn on VRR and turn the settings down, you could get things to a more comfortable level.
The verdict
It depends on the game, as well as your other specs
Overall, I'd say if the rest of your rig is high-end, gaming with one stick of 16 GB of RAM is absolutely doable, but it's heavily context dependent. For example, BF6 had relatively few issues in the average FPS department, but the 1% lows were noticeable drops. Tuning the settings to be more RAM-friendly should help in titles that are on the edge. This and Cyberpunk 2077 would perform a lot better with just a tiny bit of tuning. But as for games like Escape From Tarkov, tuning can only get you so far, and some memory-demanding games will just be too much for your single-stick setup to handle.
If you're looking to make a compromise to game immediately, this might be it
If you're currently looking to build a new rig, but don't want to pay the full RAM-tax, you can definitely dodge some of it by going with one stick for now. It's definitely not ideal, and your performance will definitely suffer a bit, but it's a legitimate way to get up and running immediately. It really just depends on the types of games you plan to play, as well as the other components in your system.
