Ram choices?

[smilne23]

Hi,

Firstly it has been a while since I have build a PC....Last built was a EVGA 790i Black Pearl and a Core 2 Quad lol.

This has probably been asked repeatedly before and I did have a browse around the forums and searched a bit but couldn't find the exact answer I was looking for.

I've been looking a ram for my new build for a while but cant seem to choose a kit to go for.

I will be primarily using the system for gaming (BF4 mainly)...but will be doing the odd bit of programming as well.

Current PC Specs....Ive got everything but the RAM and GPU

Motherboard - Gigabyte G1 Gaming Z97x Wifi BK Black Edition
CPU - Intel 4790K
GPU - Haven't Purchased but looking at a 780 Ti Classy

Anything else I have missed from the core components (excluding SSD case psu etc)

Ram choices I have been looking at are as follows;
Corsair Vengeance Pro
Kingston Hyper X Beast
Kingston Hyper X Genesis
Kingston Hyper X Predator
Team Group Vulcan
G-Skill Sniper

Does the brand or model of memory actually make a difference or is it all about speed and timings.

Are there any other brands that are better or any models I have missed?

I assume that for gaming that 1600Mhz is plenty speed wise....I know timings are important as well but the higher the Mhz the timing go higher too? This a good or bad thing? And voltage is it better to have 1.5v or 1.6v or 1.65v?

Any light shed towards an answer is much appreciated

 

[Rroff]

1.65v is fine with any recent intel CPU.

For gaming there are some minor gains from going a bit over 1600MHz but I wouldn't go mad - anything beyond 1866 with reasonably tight timings will show hugely diminishing returns unless your using a system with multiple high end GPUs and lots and lots of cores.

Generally I reckon 2133 CL9 or 2400 CL9/10 gives the best balanced performance where you will either get the best performance or be really close behind whatever config gives the best performance. Other setups might give better performance in some tasks but can see a higher penalty in other tasks.

At the moment I'm in favor of the Kingston HyperX Beast stuff - used it in a few builds now (and used HyperX stuff in the past quite a bit) and so far been the most reliable of any RAM I've used and performs reasonably - you might eek some more performance/overclocking out of some other brands though.

EDIT: Regarding BF4 - with my setup 4820K @ 4.4GHz and 780 overclocked to about ~10% faster than a stock 780ti 1600MHz with tight timings saw some minor performance drops IIRC around 6% below my 2133+ tests but I don't have the exact numbers to hand, any semi reasonable combination of MHz and timings through 2133-2600 returned FPS figures for min/max/avg within 1% of each other and all around 5-6% higher than 1600MHz. (This was all tested running through the same single player section - multiplayer might show different gains but harder to get a situation you can compare directly to any other run).

 

[smilne23]

Thanks for the information. I'm looking at either hyperx beast, hyperx genesis and corsair vengeance pro. Probably go for the one that looks best with the build (Beast seems best)