DDR3 wrt 4790K - 8GB @1600/CL8 vs 2400/CL10 for gaming

evsknight

evsknight

evsknight

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Morning,

One thing that's been bugging me has been whether I picked up 'the right' DDR when I bought it last year for the 4790K.
It works but I'm unsure if I'm bottlenecked on it at all or how I would even tell.

So my question comes down to whether changing the memory from Corsair CMZ8GX3M2A1600C8 (2x4) to a CL10 2400 set (or maybe 16GB) would be any improvement in games, especially in perhaps older RPG's which do a lot more caching and CPU work than graphics.

Or would I be just burning money for no reason?

Thanks
 
Read through it a few times and seems really subjective/screwy.

The resolution's used are very low and overall I would have expected games running at the sharper end of higher resolutions would have to do more as I don't expect it all to be purely GPU based.

I've read up a few older threads as well in various forums, appears 1600 is bad for 4790K as well and that it impacts performance so a move to a higher bandwidth set would be a good idea. CL10 2400Mhz stuff seems to be snapped up pretty regularly these days so I'll probably need to scour the bay for a decent set at a decent price.

I've also read that 2x8GB is slightly better than 4x4GB or even 4x8GB. Could be a personal misinterpretation there but I'm curious if anyone else has found this?
Quite often there's a few threads with 'imma buy this set' and then silence on whether it was good/bad/other :)
 
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There isn't much to say about it, higher speed RAM doesn't really equate to any noticeable performance improvements. All it does is allow additional headroom for CPU overclocking, where the performance improvement would be noticeable, without having to drop the RAM to speeds where the performance degradation would be noticeable. So if you're overclocking your CPU and think you're overclock is being limited by your RAM (you can test this by reducing RAM speeds and seeing if your CPU can be pushed any further) then upgrade it, if not then save your money.

The whole 2 sticks vs 4 sticks thing comes comes from the dual channel theory of dual channel being optimised and having less latency etc. As before if you've already got 2 sticks, buy all means add another 2. But there will be barely any difference, and it's definitely not cost effective to sell the 2 sticks for another set of 2 sticks at higher capacity. Really the reason most people recommend 2 sticks over 4 is so that you've got room to upgrade to 4 if more actual RAM is needed without having the expense of buying a complete new set of 4.
 
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Found a calculation which seems helpful on determining latency
(CAS/half the labelled speed)1000)

or the simpler way is to use the chip MHz and multiply by 2000.

(CAS/MHz)2000 = nanoseconds


So for me

(8/1600)2000 = 10ns

and what I'm looking at

(10/2400)2000 = 8.3ns

Seems to be a decent improvement. Real world I may not notice it but as some games and multitasking now seem to be getting closer to 8GB, sounds like a good idea to go to 16GB.

I thought i'd add this in case of anyone searches for it later :)
 
Yes isn't a nice improvement in relative latency, but your question was whether this will be reflected as an improvement in games, which it won't.

The upgrade from 8GB to 16GB will be much more noticeable if it reduces your hard faults.
 
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As a follow up on this, I picked up some 16GB DDR3 2400 CL10

Older badly coded games (I'm talking Everquest 2 here) does run better and has gained FPS (about 20-30 in some areas) but other games I haven't really noticed much of a difference other than the likely placebo effect of willing it to be quicker though it is a few FPS more in Batman AK and GTAV but it's single digit increases.

Windows 10 *does* run quicker though, alt and tabbing was sometimes problematic in some games but now is much quicker and less likely to have mini hangs when waiting for it to complete on older titles.

So i'm pleased I made the jump.
 
You've also gone from 8gb to 16gb. I'd bet money that made the difference.

I bet if you add the other 8gb back in and run at the slower speed with 24gb you will notice zero difference.
 
It's certainly a strong possibility.

I wasn't hitting 8GB prior and it's still 2 sticks for 2 sticks but as was mentioned by Mustang earlier, it could reduce faults. Or all could be in my head. Placebo is always fun.

The DDR is in another machine now so I'll pass on the science project though :)
 
evsknight said:
It's certainly a strong possibility.

I wasn't hitting 8GB prior and it's still 2 sticks for 2 sticks but as was mentioned by Mustang earlier, it could reduce faults. Or all could be in my head. Placebo is always fun.

The DDR is in another machine now so I'll pass on the science project though :)
Click to expand...

Great time to upgrade RAM with current prices nevertheless. I saw 8Gb of Kingston Fury 1866 for £30 I bespoked it for a better price but didn't proceed in the end.

Finally I'm running 2400DDR, I had low uncore volts making me unstable. I was thinking vcore could help but it uncore responds to vring.
 
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