Lower latency or higher mhz?

cerebralhigh

cerebralhigh

cerebralhigh

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Can someone please advise me as to what is most important factor when considering RAM. I'm very confused at the moment.

I know (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the lower the latency and the higher the bandwidth, the better. However after looking at loads of different RAM it's becoming apparent that as the bandwidth increases so does the latency (unless you're prepared to pay for the really expensive stuff).

Won't these two factors effectively cancel each other out? Or is bandwidth much more important than latency in terms of performance?

Confusingly the prices of low latency, standard (1600mhz) RAM can be very similar to high speed, high latency RAM. Which leads me to wonder why anyone would buy the slower RAM? What am I not understanding here?

Thanks
 
Depends what your doing neither is necessarily better.

Generally your better off buying something that has a good balance of the 2 i.e. 2133MHZ CAS9 RAM unless your building a system dedicated to one kind of task.
 
Hi Rroff, thanks for your reply. I don't have a specific kind of application in mind so that advice makes a lot of sense.

G. Skill Ripjaws X 2133mhz and Corsair Vengeance Pro 2133mhz are a similar price and both have CAS of 9. Any other brands worth looking at?
 
As roff said, try a good mix of both, just avoid the ultra high mhz kits (usually 2666+) as they'll be mfr dimms which aren't much use to the average user. A good c9/10 2133/2400 kit is the sweet spot IMO.
 
Thanks pgi. I'll avoid the 2666+.

Just having a quick look I can find G. Skill Trident X 2400 CAS 10 and G. Skill Ripjaws Z also with CAS 10. Interestingly they're about the same price as the C9/2100 RAM I mentioned previously.

Is C10/2400 the better option vs C9/2100, or is there not much in it?
 
Not really much in it - I "usually" buy a 2400MHz kit just as it gives me more headroom to play with but currently running them at 2133MHz with the timings tightened up (as I know this gives the best performance for what I do).

Unless your running multi GPU and/or 6+ core CPUs then theres not really a huge difference in any RAM between 1866-2400 for general use they'll all be broadly similiar performance with slightly different strengths/weaknesses to certain types of tasks.

I usually buy Kingston myself just because I know they are reliable if a bit boring heh. I've used OCZ (no longer around really) and G.Skills in the past.
 
Thanks guys, yes I was also looking at G.Skills. I'm thinking of using a 4670k.

I saw the Trident X C10/2400 series recommended in a magazine recently and it's not too expensive, so I thought I might go with that. My only question mark is whether 1.65V memory is wise to use with a Haswell processor, since ************ gives a warning that it exceeds Intel's maximum voltage recommendation of 1.575V. (I posted a question about this in the forum yesterday if anyone can help - sorry I don't know how to post a link).

Loads of people on here seem to really rate G.Skills and they seem cheaper than the often mentioned Corsair.
 
8 Pack, thank you for your help. I've just read your reply in the other thread too. That Team RAM looks great and is a good price. I haven't come across RAM being described as 'single sided' or 'double sided' before, but I'll be sure to check in future.
 
Single sided usually means they are hynixmfr ics, which are good for hitting high MHz but overall perf is generally poor. Usually found on 2666+ dimms hense my earlier post :)
 
Trouble is how do you know when ordering ram whether it is double or single sided chips - they don't often tell you in the specifications as far as I can see.

Mark
 
They don't, you can usually tell by timings (11-13-13/12-14-14 is quite common amongst single sided).

If in doubt ask 8 pack. Gskill 2133 9-11-10 are usually hynix and gskill 2400 10-12-12 are usually samsung
 
pgi947 said:
They don't, you can usually tell by timings (11-13-13/12-14-14 is quite common amongst single sided).

If in doubt ask 8 pack. Gskill 2133 9-11-10 are usually hynix and gskill 2400 10-12-12 are usually samsung
Click to expand...

Didn't you used to run some Gskill 2133 ram. If so! what did you manage to squeeze out of them?
 
Team group vulcan red 2400mhz here, 10-11-11-31 2T, no idea on what ic's they are though. Had them running at 2600mhz 11-13-12-31-1T, voltage bumped to 1.75.
 
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