does ram speed help in overclock?

smilertoo

smilertoo

smilertoo

Soldato
Joined
4 Aug 2005
Posts
3,364
Hi,

I'm thinking of getting a haswell cpu/mobo when they appear and was wondering does the ram speed rating help make overclocking easier?
I was thinking of going for the more expensive PC3-14400 ram if it does make a difference, i'm looking for a usable overclock...not just some crazy sky high one for bragging rights.
 
Most clocking is done using multipliers not like the older style fsb clocking so no from that perspective ram speed makes no difference, however quicker and more efficient ram does make the whole system run a little better. Some say that it gets to a point where in everyday stuff its not noticable with ivy/sandy thats around 1600 however others say that quicker everything makes everything quicker even if it is just by a few extra points in a benchmark suite at the end of the day its up to you
 
Yes it helps, you can go higher without having to mess with your ram settings to reach the max oc on the cpu. In my case, overclocking my i5 750, if I want to reach 4.2ghz I have to drop the ratio on my ram which brings it back down to 1600 instead of 1900 (won't post) which negates all the performance gains of the bandwidth that 1800 was providing. Why does that matter? 3.9ghz isn't as quick as 4.2, but without the memory bandwidth boost, the 4.2 is easily starved.

All about balance because there is more to computing than pi. :)
 
Gzero said:
Yes it helps, you can go higher without having to mess with your ram settings to reach the max oc on the cpu. In my case, overclocking my i5 750, if I want to reach 4.2ghz I have to drop the ratio on my ram which brings it back down to 1600 instead of 1900 (won't post) which negates all the performance gains of the bandwidth that 1800 was providing. Why does that matter? 3.9ghz isn't as quick as 4.2, but without the memory bandwidth boost, the 4.2 is easily starved.

All about balance because there is more to computing than pi. :)
Click to expand...

On the 750s clocking was done using the base clock rate which is why it made a difference what ram you where using since sandy you dont clock using that you use the multis which doesn't effect the ram speed
 
With Haswell BLK overclocking and dividers are back. Options are much more abundant than with SB and IVY. IMC is very strong on Haswell so a bigger performance gain is to be seen over passed generations by using faster RAM.

With all due respect the guys above have no experience with Haswell and are not in the best position to state. I recently completed many tests for Si to push the case for faster RAM use and found its defo worth it!!! For NDA reasons this is about as much as I can say.
 
Hi,
hmm back to the fast ram then, current plan is to get 'geil evo elggera 2x8gb £130'. Final choice will be made based on which mobo i go for and their compatibility list.
Need the low profile to avoid issues with the phantek cooler.
 
Last edited:
16gb is the minimum i need, i was leaving 2 slots free because i thought overclocks worked better if all ram slots wern't used. One of the uses is 3d rendering.
 
If you want 16 I'd be tempted to go Sammie green they should run high and tight assuming you get a good imc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom