DDR4 frequencies

Hi all,

With the value of the pound continuing to weaken against the dollar, I feel vaguely obliged to replace the 2500K with a 7700K.

One thing that I have found difficult to decide on however is the benefits (if any) of running higher frequency DDR4.

I have been looking specifically at G.Skill Trident Z 3600mhz, but then that is a good £40 dearer than 3200mhz. Is it worth the extra cost to make the new build more future-proof?

I intend on keeping this build for as long as the 2500K if that is possible!

Many thanks!

It's not as if you will notice the extra speed apart from in memory benchmarks so go for the 3200mhz. Even 3000mhz is plenty fast enough. One thing I will say though is that for future proofing go for a 16Gb (2x 8Gb) kit. If cost comes into it I would rather have 16Gb of 3000mhz ram than 8Gb of faster stuff. You can pick up a good 16Gb kit of 3000mhz DDR4 for £90 if you look around.

As suggested by Pasty, 3200 is a good balance in terms of performance gain. Past 3600mhz can depend on the board.

Thanks. Ended up going for the 3200, it may have some room for overclocking should it be required at a later date.

Now to decide whether to wait for AMD to get their act together, or just admit defeat and go back to intel....

This was assuming you'd already decided to purchase a 7700K?

You should have waited. The problem you have now is, you have no idea if that kit is going to work with AM4.

welcome to my muddled mind.

I was thinking :

a) RAM isn't going to get much cheaper, if at all in the near future;
b) it would probably run at whatever speed AM4 is asking for as G.Skill seem to make pretty compatible sticks, and;
c) I am leaning towards Intel as don't think I need the amount of cores AMD will be offering initially.

I may have overthought this, rightly or wrongly!

GSKILL is hand binned, and there's usually enough guardband, but a lot of unknowns with Ryzen support and Intel qualifed kits. I couldn't tell you either way.

I've recently been watching a lot of tech stuff on YouTube and the clear result seems to be faster RAM in most games makes no difference, but in a few games 3200Mhz RAM in an Intel system does make several fps of difference compared to anything much below that speed. 3200Mhz seems to be the sweet spot with any faster not having much more benefit. (for gaming)
When I make a jump from Haswell, I intend to go for 3200Mhz RAM. Although if go with Ryzen maybe the situation may be different.

Decided to cancel my order for now. Will wait a bit more.

My 2500K at 4.4ghz still does well, but certainly in games like BF1 it is beginning to hit 100% across all cores and occasional WoW stutters in raid environments!