hi, i have recently watched a video of Linustechtips on youtube which he tested a ram at different speeds to see if it really affected gaming, and the results came back that it hadnt, so is it really worth getting a 2400mhz ram rather than a 1600mhz ram, will this affect anything else but gaming and by how much ?
Does RAM speed really matter ?
- Thread starter hakank68
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I've seen the video too and I thought for myself, the only 2 reasons for getting RAM faster than 1600MHz would be either with APU or if you're an extreme OCer, where every point counts.
and then 1 occasion where spending more (not necessarily for higher speed) makes sense is aesthetics.
and then 1 occasion where spending more (not necessarily for higher speed) makes sense is aesthetics.
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The other train of thought is that if a RAM module is capable of running at 2800MHz, it should have no problems whatsoever running slower.
Why would you buy more expensive memory in the first place then.
As far as I know, RAM speeds are really "rated" speeds that the RAM can run with the system bus speed the motherboard has been set at. These are the recommended/maximum speed the RAM can be safely run at without errors. This is of course a general rule that doesn't account for RAM timings in modules which is a whole other kettle of fish.
I find that if you intend to overclock your system, then going for a higher rated speed of RAM increases the chances that your memory overclocks are more stable, allowing you to push it more. I believe all RAM are capable of running at lower speeds, its just the RAM timings and voltage are the tricky part.
I find that if you intend to overclock your system, then going for a higher rated speed of RAM increases the chances that your memory overclocks are more stable, allowing you to push it more. I believe all RAM are capable of running at lower speeds, its just the RAM timings and voltage are the tricky part.
On gaming you will not notice any difference at all, unless you are using the built-in GPU of an intel or an amd CPU.
For bechmarks, it matters a lot.
For rendering or video editing, a little bit.
In short, if it's gaming only, do not worry about it.
love your builds by the way ill be oftenly doing photoshop work for my school work and a little bit of gaming, what speed RAM would you say is most appropriate for my use ?
2133MHz is a decent speed, it won't give you any difference that you can ever see outside of benchmarks, and even then it will very often give nothing extra at all. But occasionally it will give a tiny increase so if it's the same price it's worth looking at.
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I went for 8gb of 2400MHz ram for a couple of reasons.
The main one being that a magazine review showed Haswell to offer a slight performance increase with faster memory. More so than Ivy.
Also because it only cost the price of a few pints more than a 1600MHz kit.
The main one being that a magazine review showed Haswell to offer a slight performance increase with faster memory. More so than Ivy.
Also because it only cost the price of a few pints more than a 1600MHz kit.
With memory, If I remember right, the higher the MHz, the better the bandwidth, hence 1600MHz = 12,800 MB/s, and 2133MHz = 17,100 MB/s. However this is more important for application workloads or load times than in game use. The other factor which AFAIK is most important for games is response time, which is the CAS value divided by the speed, I.E DDR1600 CAS9 = 0.0056 response time which is better than DDR1866 CAS11.
Of course I could be remembering that all wrong
Of course I could be remembering that all wrong
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It depends.
But If you are stuck with low rated ram... how will you be able to experiment and tell for yourself?
As for timings and speed it depends on the game. Some games like to loads many small files from your ram, here faster timimgs may help. Some like to load large files, here faster ram may help.
In the first instance you might experiment with how low you can get your ram timings at 1600 vs how fast you can get it going at slack timings.
Or you might find neither of those things help... BUT how will you ever be able to have fun experimenting if you get boring old, it'll do the job ram?
When set on a game that you know you will be playing a lot, you never know what you might be able to tweak out of your hardware. Ive seen minimum rate fates go up from 20 to 30 with different ram speeds and timing before now.
But If you are stuck with low rated ram... how will you be able to experiment and tell for yourself?
As for timings and speed it depends on the game. Some games like to loads many small files from your ram, here faster timimgs may help. Some like to load large files, here faster ram may help.
In the first instance you might experiment with how low you can get your ram timings at 1600 vs how fast you can get it going at slack timings.
Or you might find neither of those things help... BUT how will you ever be able to have fun experimenting if you get boring old, it'll do the job ram?
When set on a game that you know you will be playing a lot, you never know what you might be able to tweak out of your hardware. Ive seen minimum rate fates go up from 20 to 30 with different ram speeds and timing before now.
Can you please share your bois setting's. Many thanks.
The importance of Ram speed becomes less as memory cache amount increases.
For example an i3 with 3MB cache will have less cache hits then an i7 with 8MB of cache. So from this you could argue that faster memory is more important on the i3 (over an i7) as it has less memory cache.
For example an i3 with 3MB cache will have less cache hits then an i7 with 8MB of cache. So from this you could argue that faster memory is more important on the i3 (over an i7) as it has less memory cache.