FAQ and still confused!

kizzab88

kizzab88

kizzab88

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26 Mar 2014
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19
You guys have been brilliant and helped me out allot recently so I thought id fire some ram related questions your way!

I'm just trying to determin 1 - If i REALLY do need newer ram and understand how it all works now as im getting confused between 12800, 14400+ as i thought this was just speed and 14400+ would always be better?

The reason i ask this is my friend has this ram :

Corsair Vengeance Pro Silver 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C9 2133MHz -£89,99

Now I was thinking about buying

eamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit - £53.99

These are both the same speed so why the price differece! is it just because it is Corsair ?

Also looking at

TeamGroup Xtreem LV "Frost Edition" 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-21300C11 2666MHz Dual Channel Kit - £61.99 (ten off from sale)

That seems to trump them both - Looking at my new mobo it states :

4 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR3 2133(O.C.)/1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz ECC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory

So it wont run this team Group ram ? - Im just extremely confused to be honest and looking for some guidance!

Im using : GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC)

Im just trying to work out the real difference between 12800 - 14400+ and the real differences here & if my new new Asus M5A99X PRO R2.0 AMD 990X can handle it!

Sorry if this is all over the place but after an hour research im more confused than ever!
 
I'm pretty sure that it's a brand thing, coupled with a constantly changing price of RAM modules.

Corsair are a big, well known brand that on the whole people trust to make good stuff. TeamGroup are less well known, although they do seem to make good stuff too. I think this means they can afford to charge a bit of a premium on equivalent parts (which can also be justified by a pretty good warranty service from corsair).

Also, retailers buy large amounts of stock at a certain price, but with the price of RAM changing all the time they may buy large orders at very different prices and have to put them up for sale at a price to make some profit.

As for the motherboard not supporting it - that can be an issue as the RAM may be rated to run really fast, but the memory controller (which is on the CPU) needs to be able to keep up. These super fast RAM kits seem to be mainly aimed at Intel Haswell Z87 systems which can regularly run memory at 2133-2400MHz.

Also, the motherboard's BIOS needs to allow a much higher memory speed to be chosen. The ASUS board you mention should be able to run 2133MHz RAM, but the "(O.C.)" in the spec sheet means that this speed relies on the overclocking of the CPU's memory controller (the highest rated memory speed for an AMD piledriver CPU should be 1866MHz).
 
Thank you, ill be looking at some new 1866 Ram rather than 2133mhz then, it is all very confusing - maybe it would be a better idea to pick up some 2133mhz to future proof.

By the overclocking of the CPU memory controller. Do you mean literally the overclocking of the CPU? I will be writting a post about that eventually or reading as im keen to overclock my 8350 from 4ghz as wel. Appreciate you taking the time to reply
 
Would you consider my GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) more that adequate?

Thanks again.
 
On modern CPUs the memory speed and CPU core speed are controlled on the CPU, but they are on separate areas of the chip and are not directly linked to each other (so overclocking the memory controller to run 2133MHz RAM would not also overclock the CPU cores faster than their stock speed).

So running RAM which is faster than your CPU is rated to doesn't mean you are overclocking your CPU in the standard sense - just overclocking one subcomponent.

To be honest, you aren't going to get much extra performance with a new 2133MHz kit compared to your existing 1600MHz kit with a modern AMD CPU. In this review which compares a Bulldozer CPU with RAM kits from 1600MHz to 2400MHz and they found in the best situation the performance difference was 6%.
 
Hi, you could considor this ram TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit £53.99 this week only. If colour does not matter very good ram for the price which would give you 2133 or just down clock the memory to 1866 and adjust ram timings to suite.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-036-TG&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

If overclocking your build CPU + GPU why leave the memory out at 1600, why not 1866 or even 2133.

Using this ram my self at 2133 timings at 10-11-11-30-1t.
 
Thanks again!

If i was just to plug and play what would the timings be like?

I havent the first clue about over clocking at all so its all very new to me, Believe my system is fairly decent but will be looking to overclock the CPU and im just trying to understand a bit more.

I'll think ill keep the current ram I have till next pay day!. I was looking to over clock the CPU and ram I wont touch the GPU yet. All a huge learning curve! i have read the

GeIL Black Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) runs at 1333mhz not 1600 without clocking.
 
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