Haswell i7 - Any point in >1866Mhz RAM other than benching?

Yes, 2400MHz even 8pack would tell you this.

I had to use TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 2133MHz as they were out of stock, tweak the memory timings and its even better, stock timings 11-11-11-31 to 10-11-10-29-1t read and write is improved along with latency.
 
Think the sweetspot for Haswell, price v performance is 2133 and tweak timings, but as already suggested no harm in going for a good set of 2400, and again tweak timings down.

Mark
 
Thing is I'm looking at getting 32GB of RAM. I run a few VMs and at the moment I'm shutting em down and up and down...

At that amount, it becomes a bit price sensitive - thus the question about real world rather than than just benching.

The 2133 Mhz I'm looking at (Corsair Dominator Platinum) is about £70 more than the 1866Mhz - and runs @ 1.65V rather than 1.5.
 
Sandy it was claimed 1600mhz and some claimed 1866mhz but after that the CPU will not benefit.

I tried both on i2700k

On Haswell its a lot higher and going by reading it seems to be about 2400mhz is a good kit to buy.

I have 1866mhz on Haswell but only due to I bought them while on Sandy as I think my 1600mhz kit had an issue with 1 module or I would not have bought the 1866mhz.
 
Considering current Ram prices and the minor increases in performance, you are better putting the money elsewhere in the system imho. But there are of course small performance benefits to faster ram, although in real world applications they'd be hard to notice.
 
Speed said:
Considering current Ram prices and the minor increases in performance, you are better putting the money elsewhere in the system imho. But there are of course small performance benefits to faster ram, although in real world applications they'd be hard to notice.
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Not sure. Problem is I use RAM. I run VMs - I would (if I had enough) be running a Mac (naughty I know) and at least two linux VMs, one of which would be constantly reading and processing large xml files with php, which is RAM instensive / sensitive. Often I use photoshop with 10 or so documents open. I need RAM as the 12GB in my sig has decreased to 8GB as 4GB went with my old i5 750 / p7p55 rig that is now my mums. 8 GB is crippling me! As is, I have one linux vm running all the time, but I shut it down to open the Mac or do any proper Photoshop work.

I hardly game - so a GPU, which is the other weakest part of my rig wouldn't be of much use. My 7850 works fine for me at the moment. Otherwise the rest of my rig is pretty top of the line. I have 3 ssds (one 240GB Intel 530, one 240GB intel 520 and a 64GB Crucial c300 as scratch disk) and about 10TB of storage on decent WD large platter discs. So I don't think there's anywhere else to spend money ;) Not that spending money is the aim here!

I *could* get away with buying 16GB, but what if (as I found last time I bought 4GB - though luckily I found another 8GB that matched), in 12 or 18 months I need or want more - better off buying more than I need and buying it matched to begin with.

I've looked around at other brands but I want the Dominator Plats. My case is windowed ;) I think I'm just gonna have to suck up the £450 or get 16GB... Or get 1866Mhz RAM which is about £100 cheaper for 32GB - and runs at 1.5v. That's the conundrum...
 
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I assumed you were asking a general question, not advice for you with specific requirements. Generally speaking most users wouldn't see much of a real world benefit to slightly faster ram, hence my advice. Especially with prices like they are, money can go elsewhere or be saved for future upgrades.

Yes, sounds like you'd benefit from more memory, so buy as much as you can afford. I wouldn't be too worried about speed, operating voltage, brands or looks if its going to cost you lots of extra money. Honestly £450 is silly money to be spending on DDR3 memory imho, you can pick up 32GB of 1600MHz for £200+ less.
 
Speed said:
I assumed you were asking a general question, not advice for you with specific requirements. Generally speaking most users wouldn't see much of a real world benefit to slightly faster ram, hence my advice. Especially with prices like they are, money can go elsewhere or be saved for future upgrades.

Yes, sounds like you'd benefit from more memory, so buy as much as you can afford. I wouldn't be too worried about speed, operating voltage, brands or looks if its going to cost you lots of extra money. Honestly £450 is silly money to be spending on DDR3 memory imho, you can pick up 32GB of 1600MHz for £200+ less.
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Yeah - that's what I was thinking... I don't mind spending a little extra on decent RAM - I'm quite tempted by the 1866Mhz 32GB Platinums - The extra ££120/£130 is worth it for the heatsinks, their binning and warranty... but I'm really not sure the 2400Mhz are worth £250 odd over other brands and models. Especially they're certified for 2400Mhz @ 1.65v - whilst the 1866Mhz are @ 1.5v - I'm really not sure when overclocked / underclocked / undervolted / overvolted / whatever they're gonna be especially different.

Another thing I did think about - these new Nvidia GPUs using system RAM. No-one really knows about that in detail / real world though yet do they?
 
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Been out the memory game for a long while but cant you get the 1866 and overclock them a little bit like the good days
 
The best balanced performance comes at 2133MHz CAS9 for overall use but 1866 is a good budget option that will see hardly any performance loss in most cases - I did a bit of testing with BF4 and you have to go down to some really poor timing 1600MHz stuff before you lose more than 1-2% FPS over top of the line 2400MHz RAM (in that game specifically).

There are some exceptions, some specific tasks can take big advantages of tight timings or massive frequency speeds and/or are penalised by the opposite configuration to what they run best on but that doesn't apply to most mainstream use.

Unless your trying to get that last 1-2% to hit a new world record or running a decently clocked 6+ core CPUs with 3-4 high end GPUs stuff like 3000MHz RAM is a waste of time and money.
 
So I bought 16GB (2x8) of 2133Mhz C9 Dominator Platinums. Got them for £170. 32GB of matched was well over double.

Decided I can make do with 16GB if I just shut my Mac VM down when I'm doing heavy PS work. Still double what I have been living with for the last 4 or 5 months.

So far, so good. PC seems obv. snappier all round. And they run at tighter timings (9-9-9-9) at a lower voltage (1.5v) than their spec. I haven't even touched the bios settings yet -that's just their thang apparently.
 
What about on Ivybridge? Will it benefit from speed of higher than 1866?

currently running 16gb 1600mhz ram at 1866 on pretty poor timings 10-10-10-30
 
Speed said:
Considering current Ram prices and the minor increases in performance, you are better putting the money elsewhere in the system imho. But there are of course small performance benefits to faster ram, although in real world applications they'd be hard to notice.
Click to expand...

+1
 
32gb of ram id stick to 1600mhz speed

but yes youll see benefit from faster mem speeds but only in benchmarks,it also depends on the price,if you can get faster ram speed for the same or cheaper money then do that,you can always dial down the speed
 
I've just got an i7 4770k and using it with 8gig of geil blaack dragon 1600mhz should i sell my ram and get some 2133-2400mhz ram would I get any benefit from doing this.
 
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