Worth buying 1333 memory over 1600 for this system?

Participant · 14 Oct 2010 at 15:01

Hi

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 and the CPU is an Intel i5 760.

My question is...is there any point going for 1600 memory or should I just save a few quid and stick with DDR3 1333?

Also, the mobo specs say dual channel...does this mean that triple channel will not work at all, or that it will work but will only run dual channel?

I'll be overclocking the system somewhat i.e. getting anything I can easily get out of it, without straining anything.

The motherboard specs say DDR3 1666 (OC)...is this something to do with supporting the faster memory speeds when overclocked?

Thanks.

/total memory noob.

cmndr_andi · 14 Oct 2010 at 15:13

The performance difference is very small, I suggest getting the cheapest, good qulaity RAM you can find of either speed - but if a 1600MHz kit is only a few quid more than a 1333MHz one then you may as well go for the faster one, as you have more options when overclocking.

I think the 1666MHz (OC) bit means that you will have to raise the BCLK above stock (133MHz) to achieve this memory speed.

Dual channel mode is what you want to run the system in. Triple channel is not supported by this board - so if you bought a triple channel RAM kit it will either run in dual or single channel mode (depending on how it is configured)

This kit is a good one to go for at the moment.

Participant · 14 Oct 2010 at 15:52

Thanks for that.

The 1333 'Classic' version of that kit (without the heat spreaders) is £63.18 delivered. Do you think I'm realistically going to get more juice out of the system by spending the extra £12 for the faster mem?

cmndr_andi · 14 Oct 2010 at 16:13

If you plan to overclock then the extra memory speed headroom will make your life easier, but in terms of raw performance the difference is very small.

Participant · 14 Oct 2010 at 16:15

Gotcha, thanks.

1Day · 14 Oct 2010 at 17:04

Mate that motherboard is a dream of a mobo - I have clocked my ram past 2000 MHz on that board with no stress what so ever.

Don't worry about the CPU frequency that was done sub-zero but the ram frequency was done with bog standard £76 OEM ram that I bought from OCUK.

So the point is sometimes you just get lucky and cheaper does not always mean not as good.

kedge · 14 Oct 2010 at 17:47

1Day said:
Mate that motherboard is a dream of a mobo - I have clocked my ram past 2000 MHz on that board with no stress what so ever.

Don't worry about the CPU frequency that was done sub-zero but the ram frequency was done with bog standard £76 OEM ram that I bought from OCUK.

That's awesome m8, smashing super great.

shadow_boxer · 16 Oct 2010 at 11:24

Nice overclock there mate. Awesome.

Metroid · 17 Oct 2010 at 23:14

It all depends of memory latency. I prefer to buy a 1600Mhz CL7 than 2000Mhz CL8. It would be great if you could afford a 1600Mhz CL6 or get a 1600Mhz CL7 or 8 overclocked to that point.

Stevinchy · 22 Oct 2010 at 14:20

Metroid said:
It all depends of memory latency. I prefer to buy a 1600Mhz CL7 than 2000Mhz CL8. It would be great if you could afford a 1600Mhz CL6 or get a 1600Mhz CL7 or 8 overclocked to that point.

You could clock any 2000cl8 kit at 1600cl7 easily, in fact you could probably get the timings even tighter.

JonJ678 · 22 Oct 2010 at 14:32

I'm using 1600mhz cas8 corsair at 1200mhz cas6. If I'd been thinking more clearly when I bought the ram I'd be running 1333mhz stuff at 1200, I don't believe the latancy matters a great deal.

thingemajib · 22 Oct 2010 at 15:18

My personal thought is that 1600c7 is the current sweetspot. having said that, i use 1333mhzc7 on an AMD system, and its more than enough for my overclocking (i seem to recall making it work at 1600c9 at some point but haven't really been bothered to verify this...)

1Day · 22 Oct 2010 at 16:50

JonJ678 said:
I'm using 1600mhz cas8 corsair at 1200mhz cas6. If I'd been thinking more clearly when I bought the ram I'd be running 1333mhz stuff at 1200, I don't believe the latancy matters a great deal.

You are right - for day to day stuff it matters very little at all. 99% of the time I defy anyone to even notice the difference.

There will be a noticeable difference in applications that rely heavily on memory to do their work, media rendering and stuff like that. But even these applications benefit more from the quantity of available ram rather than solely the latency or speed of the ram.

Just for information - the P55 chipset has some lovely ram options. I picked up a set of Geil EVO2 2000Mhz cas6 (dual channel) the other day. I benchmark quite a bit as a hobby so they were worth a punt to see what they could do.