12GB @ 1600MHz or 6GB @ 2000MHz+ ?

VortX

VortX

VortX

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As title, what is better? - on a 1366 socket/i7 combo.

I know 12GB isn't needed right now, but does the extra 400+MHz on the 6GB combo work better for overclocking an i7 CPU as I'm not too familiar with the i7 method of overclocking (still have a Core 2). Price isn't an issue because I will either buy 6GB high end RAM or 12GB mid range RAM.

Thank you.
 
Fairly slim odds of you achieving either to be honest, tends to be limited by memory controller rather than the ram itself.

Still, read this. http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3589&p=1 for your answer regarding speed / timings and performance.

You can get 4.2ghz out of a 920 with the ram running at 1200mhz, so you don't need faster ram for higher overclocks.
 
JonJ678 said:
Fairly slim odds of you achieving either to be honest, tends to be limited by memory controller rather than the ram itself.

Still, read this. http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3589&p=1 for your answer regarding speed / timings and performance.

You can get 4.2ghz out of a 920 with the ram running at 1200mhz, so you don't need faster ram for higher overclocks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply Jon, the amount of times you have helped me out I've lost count lol probably the only person I remember on this forum other than the Dons :p I'm goanna take a look at the link and read through that.

Although I'm curious why you say it is unlikely to achieve 2000MHz? So many people have easily achieved this. I am talking about a similar spec to say; i7 920, Dom GTs and a Rampage 2 extreme...? I have even seen people achieve 2000MHz on a 12GB combo using the above...

I'll have a read of the link anyway.
 
Well I've read through that article and I can't really justify the extra money for the 2GHz kit, especially reading about their failure rate. I think I may just purchase a decent 1600MHz kit, or even a 1866MHz kit as I have seen some really good deals about.

Thanks Jon :).
 
Cheers man, more than happy to help :)

The ram will be good for 2ghz (or higher if you buy better stuff still), but whether your processor will be or not is a trickier question. Intel built it for 1333mhz after all. I think the main issue is needing such a high uclk value to support the ram, you're limited to about 4ghz on the uclk which puts a hard limit of 2ghz on the ram even if nothing else struggles.

I'd be very interested if you have links to people running 12gb of ram at 2000mhz. I found a forum a while back with a collection of people trying for similar things, the main thing they had in common was pushing 1.5V QPI which I consider a bit mad. PaulyD had 12gb at 1750mhz for a while, I can't get 1600 stable.

I'm using 12gb at 1200mhz cas6 at present, if I lower bsck I can get 1600 cas8 nearly stable. Based mostly on that article I don't feel particularly bad about the lower frequency, ram bandwidth just isn't much of a bottleneck anymore.
 
I'm 90% sure linking to XS is fair game, but I could be wrong. Hard to be sure on here.

Some seriously nice results there. Cheers for the link. I'm fond of OCZ for ram, though moved to corsair dominators this time around.
 
depends on your workload.
if you regularly use programs that use a lot of memory, then go for 12gig, then you're set for at least the next few years.
if your just after a high end system cos you can, then go with a single 6gig kit (3x2gig) and get another kit in a couple of years time (when if will probably be significantly cheaper anyways)
 
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