Probably a stupid question!

pumaz

pumaz

pumaz

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I've just bought a Z97 motherboard and a i7 4790k to construct a new rig but plan on using my old 2 x 8GB Corsiar Vengance 1600 MHz CL9 (9-9-9-24).

I see people using much higher rated memory in similar builds, I don't plan on over-clocking anytime soon but wouldn't completely rule it out! Will this memory hold me back at stock or if I decide to overclock?

Thanks
 
High RAM frequency has very little, if there is any, effect on overall performance.
And it will not hold you back when overclocking either because with the current processor architecture you can overclock your cpu without worry about the RAM too much.
bottom line, your ram is fine.
 
i think anandtech did an interesting set of benchmarks on this matter.
from memory as long as its over 1600mhz with cas 13 it was no holding back the CPU.
Even slow ram only lower performance by a few % points.
The faster memory is only important for one thing and thats when using the intel on chip graphics
 
Some time ago I remember reading an article about how memory timings can be important to performance and not just the raw frequency. As a general rule of thumb you get some kind of performance index by dividing the frequency with the cas latency.

So raw frequency can often be misleading about the performance of memory.

At any rate there is a trivial performance difference ~1-5% between 1600 mhz and 2400 mhz depending on the software and particular memory choices. Its almost always a better investment to spend that extra money on a GPU than buying more expensive memory.

Plus, if I'm not mistaken, your mobo supports DDR4 and therefore you can potentially upgrade the memory in the future when DDR4 has matured a bit and brings some significant performance upgrade over DDR3. Save your money and wait for that
 
Reaper123 said:
Plus, if I'm not mistaken, your mobo supports DDR4 and therefore you can potentially upgrade the memory in the future...
Click to expand...

You are mistaken I'm afraid. Only X99 motherboards and Haswell-E processors are DDR4 - totally different memory controllers and pin arrangements on the chips.

Z97 and Haswell on Socket 1150 does not, nor will it ever, support DDR4.
 
You'll be good.

Only FSX and Arma 3 that I know of make any real use of faster ram for FPS and be difference between say 2666 c10 and yours would be minimal anyway.

Only worth considering when buying from scratch.
 
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