DDR3 1600 vs 2400

I

Igg

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 4, 2002
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Just upgraded from 2600k on z68 to 4790k 97z

Any thoughts on the reusuing my corsair vengance ram that's 16GB @ 1600? or should I try and spring for the 2400 stuff?

Any thoughts on the speed difference being noticeable on fps?
 
In a 60 fps game, you might see a 1 fps increase. Maybe 2.

In a CPU dependent game with lots of units (like RTS with massive unit battles), you might see a 2-5% gain.
 
I moved from 1600 CL6 to 2400 CL11 but am running at 2200MHz due to Sandybridge limitation.
Cant tell the difference at all.
 
If you are gaming with the graphics on the CPU, it can make a big difference. If you are gaming with a video card, it does not make any difference at all, until you are using very high-end mutliple-card setups.
 
I've been wondering this myself. I have 16gb 1600 oced to 1866 in my system now. I also have 8gb 2400 sitting in the box. I haven't really have had time to do testing.
 
You definitely wouldn't be able to pick it out in a side-by-side unlabeled test drive.

I/O-heavy operations like compressing files see up to 5-10% improvement.

Mixed operations like games and video encoding see less than 5% improvement.
 
I went with 2100mhz ram because it was only about $15 more (for 16gb) than 1600mhz and who knows if broadwell will require faster ram so I can always reuse it in the future. You probably wont ever notice a difference so I wouldn't spend big bucks on faster ram.
 
There is a small benefit with higher Mhz, but then it doesn't warrant purchase of a new set of Ram when you are already having one.... Just use what you are having as it doesn't make much sense to buy a new one.
 
Yes, in terms of max/average FPs you won't get much difference. But, from the tests I've been reading on various forums, not many pay attention to minimal FPS. It seems that with faster ram, the minimal FPs goes up by a lot, and that does improve gaming. People nowadays are too obsessed with max fps and do not understand that min fps is sometimes more important :)
 
MorgothPl said:
Yes, in terms of max/average FPs you won't get much difference. But, from the tests I've been reading on various forums, not many pay attention to minimal FPS. It seems that with faster ram, the minimal FPs goes up by a lot, and that does improve gaming. People nowadays are too obsessed with max fps and do not understand that min fps is sometimes more important :)
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No it don't. Maybe a tiny bit like 1 or 2 fps but not a lot. Nobody out there is obsessed with max FPS most are watching the average frame rate.

If your minimum is low enough that a couple frames actually matter you should look to other things to upgrade.
 
DDR3 2400 can give up to 10% performance compared to 1600 so if you didn't have ram already it would be well worth the price premium

But since you already have 16 gigs then it's not really worth it.
 
MorgothPl said:
Yes, in terms of max/average FPs you won't get much difference. But, from the tests I've been reading on various forums, not many pay attention to minimal FPS. It seems that with faster ram, the minimal FPs goes up by a lot, and that does improve gaming. People nowadays are too obsessed with max fps and do not understand that min fps is sometimes more important :)
Click to expand...

Completely true. Who cares if your avg is 70 when it dips during any action to 30 constantly? Especially in cpu heavy games this can be the case where high speed ram helps immensely, while most mass overclockers seem oblivious to said facts.
 
GonzoP said:
Good link. Having said that I'm still on ddr1333 which I run at 1600 but then again I'm on an old x58 system [made new with my new Xeon however]
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On X58, you'd want higher speed RAM to achieve 1:1 for your overclocked BCLK, so any performance gains due to RAM a kind of moot.

1600 -> 200 BCLK, which suited me perfectly fine for my old i7 920 D0 :)
 
GonzoP said:
Good link. Having said that I'm still on ddr1333 which I run at 1600 but then again I'm on an old x58 system [made new with my new Xeon however]
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On X58, you'd want higher speed RAM to achieve 1:1 for your overclocked BCLK, so any performance gains due to RAM a kind of moot.

1600 -> 200 BCLK, which suited me perfectly fine for my old i7 920 D0 :)
 
Like most have said, in gaming you'd be lucky to see a difference
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
On X58, you'd want higher speed RAM to achieve 1:1 for your overclocked BCLK, so any performance gains due to RAM a kind of moot.

1600 -> 200 BCLK, which suited me perfectly fine for my old i7 920 D0 :)
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Huh? 1:1 BCLK meant absolutely nothing after LGA775.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
True, but IIRC, Anandtech did an article showing that there were slight performance gains to be had when running 1:1.
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Well, if it meant your CPU was running at 4.0 instead of 3.9 ghz, and your RAM at 1600 instead of 1500 mhz, QPI, etc, obviously there's going to be performance gains. But BCLK by itself means absolutely nothing in terms of performance for Nehalem and subsequent architectures.
 
Tsumi said:
Well, if it meant your CPU was running at 4.0 instead of 3.9 ghz, and your RAM at 1600 instead of 1500 mhz, QPI, etc, obviously there's going to be performance gains. But BCLK by itself means absolutely nothing in terms of performance for Nehalem and subsequent architectures.
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No, I meant that for a given BCLK and core speed, IIRC it was best to stick to a 1:1 divider.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
No, I meant that for a given BCLK and core speed, IIRC it was best to stick to a 1:1 divider.
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And again, a 1:1 divider means absolutely nothing for the Nehalem platform. It only meant higher performance for the LGA 775 platform, that's it.
 
WhoBeDaPlaya said:
On X58, you'd want higher speed RAM to achieve 1:1 for your overclocked BCLK, so any performance gains due to RAM a kind of moot.

1600 -> 200 BCLK, which suited me perfectly fine for my old i7 920 D0 :)
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm running 200BLCK and 1600 on the ram
 
Wow those benches are golden, goes to show you that tighter timings on your ram can make up for a frequency increase. I think the same is true when going over dual channel to triple or even quad channel for the 2011 chips, diminishing returns after a certain point on each architecture.
 
16GB DDR3 1600 CL8 for $95 or 16GB DDR3 2400 CL11 for $155? 4790K stock. Worth paying 50% more for a 10% performance. Am I better off getting the 1600 kit and OC'ing my 4790K to 4.4GHz?
 
sfsilicon said:
16GB DDR3 1600 CL8 for $95 or 16GB DDR3 2400 CL11 for $155? 4790K stock. Worth paying 50% more for a 10% performance. Am I better off getting the 1600 kit and OC'ing my 4790K to 4.4GHz?
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10%? More like 0-5%, on average maybe 2%.
 
~5% from 1866 to 2400, while ~10% from 1333 to 1866. Given that 1866 usually costs ~0-5% more than 1333, while 2400 usually costs ~20-30% more than 1866...
 
You need to balance the ratio between performance increase and cost. I don't think you'll be benefiting that much considering the price difference ...
 
Minimum recorded frame rates have no meaning except when you quantify the number of low frames (and set a standard length for the benchmark run), and include the average frame rate for comparison.

This is why sites like Tech Report include counts of low frames, as well as percentile graphs. It really doesn't matter if the number of occurrences of this "lowest" frame rate is in the teens for an entire hour of game-play (you won't notice such rare outliers), so the significance is lost if all you report is the lowest frame rate recorded for the entire test run.

http://techreport.com/review/26735/overclocking-intel-pentium-g3258-anniversary-edition-processor/3
 
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Here's my data for 1600 vs 1866 vs 2400. I used my G.Skill CL9 1600mhz, Kingston's Savage 16GB 1866 CL9 and Kingston Savage 8GB 2400 Mhz CL11. I've run about 20 benchmarks of each software and picked the highest. Differences are barely noticeable, and in some of the benchmars my 1600 scored higher than 2400.

1600:
Tomb raider
Min 52
Max 90
Average 69.41

Sleeping dogs
Min 37.2
Max 63.2
Average 54.1

Valley
Min 22.4
Average 54.3
Max 106.9
Score 2271

Kingston 1866

Tomb raider
Min 52
Max 82
Average68.3

Sleeping dogs
Min 38.4
Max 63.7
Average 54.3

Valley
Min 26.8
Max 102.8
Average 54.1
Score 2262

Kingston 2400
Tomb raider
Min 54
Max 82
Average 68.2

Sleeping dogs
Min 38.2
Max 64.6
Average 54.2

Valley
Min 25.9
Max 108.2
Average 54.9
Score 2295
 
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