RAM Speed: Better to go for faster than needed?

Antnee

Antnee

Antnee

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13 Feb 2009
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42
Hi guys,

Quick question (I hope) on RAM speeds, if you don't mind? I've seen a good deal for a 16GB G.Skill CL9 1866MHz 4x4GB RAM pack that I'm thinking of adding to my upgrade basket when I pick up an i7 3930k and an Asus P9X79 Pro board in the next couple of weeks. Intel's Ark pages for the CPU say that it only needs 1600 RAM though. So, poking around I found a 32GB G.Skill 1600MHz 8x4GB RAM pack for only 40% more than the 16GB kit.

I've had some advice and I wondered if anyone could confirm or refute for me? Basically, I was told two things:
  1. The 1866 would clock down to 1600 and would have marginally faster timings
  2. The 8x4GB pack would use both banks and that would result in slower performance than the 4x4GB pack using one bank

So, the million dollar question is whether any of this is true, and what you guys would advise. I'm being advised elsewhere to go for the 16GB kit instead of the 32 but who wouldn't want 32GB if they can afford it and the system will handle it? ;)

What do you guys think?

* For the record, and in case anyone is wondering, the reason I need this upgrade is because I'm currently running a 5-year old Alienware PC with an Athlon 64 x2 6000 and 6GB RAM. I run a lot of virtual machines and do a lot of database work, so really need plenty of RAM and threads to work
 
What operating system are you planning on running?

I assume Windows 7 but you need the Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate versions to use more than 16GB of RAM.

The limit for Home Premium is 16GB.

I'll ignore Home Basic and Starter as I doubt you'll be going near those.
 
Surveyor said:
What operating system are you planning on running?

I assume Windows 7 but you need the Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate versions to use more than 16GB of RAM.

The limit for Home Premium is 16GB.

I'll ignore Home Basic and Starter as I doubt you'll be going near those.
Click to expand...


Only for 64Bit versions (except Home Basic), all 32Bit versions are limited to 4GB apart from Starter which is 2GB,
 
Surveyor said:
What operating system are you planning on running?
Click to expand...
Will be, and already am, running Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate. Already checked up various minimum/maximum requirements, I'm just unsure about the whole 1866-clocked-down-to-1600MHz vs just 1600MHz and the 4x4GB vs 8x4GB issues that I mentioned earlier. Any ideas on those ones?

Cheers chaps :)
 
Nobody got any opinion on this one? The money to buy the bits I need hit my bank account today so I'm ready to roll, I just want to be sure about what to buy.

Cheers
 
The CPU will not throttle your memory speed but depending on the quality of your IMC, it may require a bit more voltage on the VCSSA. However, you can only take advantage of the speed if you encode, do video editing or multi task. For normal use, web browsing and other simple task, you wouldn't notice the difference except in benchmark.

Here's a 32 Gig with 1866MHz speed

and here's 32 Gig with 2133MHz speed.

Memory manufacturer will not deliver higher speed modules if there's no tangible performance advantage over the lower speed ones because nobody will buy it and they will suffer losses.

Your X79 can handle speed up to 2600MHz or maybe beyond depending on your cooling system and overclocking ability. Thats why we have this. :D

If you head to extremesystem, you will see some guys there even run 64 gigs.
 
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That's the kind of answer I was looking for, cheers. Unfortunately it's a bit late :D Already ordered the bits and went for the 32GB 1600MHz for now. That RAM kit you linked to is twice the price for half as much, though I don't doubt that it's awesome! My cooling is far from extreme; Raven RV01 chassis with an off-the-shelf Asetek built closed-loop liquid cooler attached to the top fan.

I won't be doing any encoding etc, but I will be running a lot of VMs and I need to emulate our live servers which are 8GB machines running CentOS and run some MySQL cluster databases for development (ie I need to run 2x VMs at a time. 12 threads and 32GB RAM ought to be adequate
 
Thank you. I'm looking forward to it :) Mind you, had I read info like your last post a few days ago, I'd probably have plumbed for the 16GB 1866MHz kit at the very least, if not actually just seen how fast I could go for the same price as the 32GB 1600MHz kit. Not to worry; it'll still be a vast improvement over my Athlon 64 X2 6000 with 6GB RAM that I have now :D
 
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