RAM frequency vs latency with Trinity APUs

[conelton]

Hi

I'm looking at getting the A10-5800k Trinity FM2 APU. I've read up a fair bit and it seems that most people recommend buying faster memory in order to boost the GPU performance, which makes sense.

So I looked on OcUK and most of the 1866MHz+ memory kits have higher latencies than the usual 9-9-9-24 for 1600MHz kits. Is it worth the trade-off? Is it better to get a higher frequency (2133/2400MHz perhaps) or stick to lower latencies with slightly lower frequencies?

I'll be using the system for light gaming (Dirt 3 and some older games) and other general use, so I guess the gain isn't neccesarily essential, but I'd rather not miss out on it considering it's only an extra ~£10.

Thanks

 

[eddyr]

It's bandwith the igp is starved for so the higher bandwith/throughput more than offsets the slightly higher latency before data is transferred as its the principle bottleneck. Once the bandwith is satisfied then the performance enhancements of latency begin to shine, hence why some cpu specific work can be quite sensitive to it. Im not sure where the tradeoff between faster mem and latency is for the trinity apu's, worth checking some reviews out there that have looked at the effect of faster ram with trinity before you settle on a pair of sticks.

 

[james_2k]

the latency (iirc) is tied to the speed anyway. so cl8 1600 and cl10 2133 is probably the same latency anyway. but the 2133 has way more bandwidth