Did I buy the wrong memory?

[ag_dewey]

I upgraded my rig back in January, with a bundle from OCUK, consisting of an Asus Maximus VII Ranger and a Core i7 4790K. At the time, DDR3 memory prices were higher than they are now, and I had to go for the cheapest option, in order to get the 16GB I desired, within my budget. Now I'm wondering if I made the wrong decision, and should have spent a bit more on a faster kit.

I bought two lots of the 'Avexir Core Blue Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit'. I didn't do much research at the time, as I didn't think memory speed and timings would have much effect, unless I wanted to overclock my CPU. I've since seen it suggested that faster speeds are better with Haswell CPUs, and that the timings are more important than I thought. On top of this, running 4 sticks of RAM puts more stress on the IMC, and can lead to slower overall speeds.

I also noticed the timings of the memory are wrong on the product page, as they are listed as 11-11-11-24 at 1600MHz, whereas the SPD is programmed to 11-11-11-28. I attempted to run the memory at lower timings of 9-9-9-24, but immediately ran into errors when running Memtest86.

I really wanted my new rig to be as future proof as possible, hence wanting 16GB of RAM, but now I'm worred that the memory speed is going to have a detrimental effect in the future, especially in applications that are memory intensive.

Are memory speeds and timings really that important in every day use, or are they just for people who want the best benchmark scores? Please put my mind at rest !

 

[stulid]

Higher speeds and lower timings is more noticeable in benchmarks where every point and second saved matters.

Faster speed RAM gets speced as its generally the same price as 1600 stuff.

 

[pastymuncher]

Those timings are pretty abysmal for ram that's only rated at 1600mhz. Normally 1600mhz would be around cas 9. I wouldn't have touched them with a bargepole. One thing to put your mind at rest though, Haswell has no problems running 4x sticks of ram. I didn't even have to increase any voltages for mine.

 

[ag_dewey]

Those timings are pretty abysmal for ram that's only rated at 1600mhz. Normally 1600mhz would be around cas 9. I wouldn't have touched them with a bargepole. One thing to put your mind at rest though, Haswell has no problems running 4x sticks of ram. I didn't even have to increase any voltages for mine.

I was afraid you were going to say that! I wish I had done some more research and spent a bit more, as I want everything to run the best it can. I'll see if I can lower the timings with some more voltage on the memory, as it's listed as supporting 1.50-1.60V on the product page, and is currently running at 1.50.

 

[ZXSpectrum]

Those timings are pretty abysmal for ram that's only rated at 1600mhz. Normally 1600mhz would be around cas 9. I wouldn't have touched them with a bargepole. One thing to put your mind at rest though, Haswell has no problems running 4x sticks of ram. I didn't even have to increase any voltages for mine.

That's not true at all. All standard/oem 1600Mhz from the likes of Corsair/Kingston/Crucial will be those timings.

Unless you are pushing your system to get every drop of performance out of it then I wouldn't worry about it. You will get some new memory, set it to the correct XMP then boot to windows and notice... Errr nothing. I have used tried 8/16/32 in the same system with differing speeds and timings and there has been no perceivable difference in performance. You will only see it in benchmarks.

 

[Admetos]

It's as Stulid said, you will only really notice in benchmarks. In the grand scheme it will make no difference.

 

[Gibbo]

As already stated all 1600MHz memory is now pretty much C11, the reason for this is because manufacturers have stopped speed binning memory which helps them reduce cost and reduce pricing to end-users.

In short that leaves the fun on overclocking or improving the timings down to the customer.

Just change the voltage to 1.55v and set the timings to 9-9-9-24-1T and see if things are stable, if not change to 1.60v and if still not so change 1T down to 2T.

 

[pastymuncher]

OCUK sells loads of cas 9 1600mhz ram. I had some Corsair XMS3 1600mhz years ago and that was cas 8 while the standard version of it was cas 9. Anything less is just the manufacturers cheaping out. Personally I wouldn't accept cas 11 on anything less than 2400mhz. Okay, it's probably not noticeable in anything but benchmarks but it's the principle of things. We are supposed to be going forward not backwards.

 

[ag_dewey]

Thanks for all the replies guys. I did notice that the standard memory sets from most manufacturers are C11, with the lower timings reserved for the performance models.

I upped the memory voltage to 1.60V, and changed the timings to 9-9-9-24-1T, but I was getting memory errors straight away in Memtest86. I changed back to 2T, and everything was stable, so now I'm going to try lowering the voltage slightly.