What is the point....

T

The Cobra

Supreme [H]ardness
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...of Higher clocked memory for a gaming system? DDR3/1866MHz seems to be the norm, but I see other ram such as DDR3/2400MHz running at 1.65v a bit more expensive then the DDR3/1866 memory.

I just want to understand.
 
It actually does not help you in gaming :) It will help you in other task though such as rendering, benchmarking, encoding or other RAM dependent tasks.
 
I just built my first rig, Haswell i3-4330 on a ASRock Z87E board and at first I was all upset when I realized that this board supports higher RAM speeds and I "only have" the default 1600, especially when you can get 2400 dimms for practically the same price.

What I have read so far indicates that faster RAM provides only the slightest little bit of performance increase. If I was doing it again and was starting from scratch I'd go 2400 just because it's basically the same price, but for now I keep trying to tell myself 1600 is good enough... :D
 
When I buy RAM I just go for whatever speed / voltage my motherboard supports and is of good quality.
 
Epeen.

And some people are stupid and just see higher numbers and equate them with better.
 
Oddly enough everyone's signatures in this thread so far seem to agree on Patriot RAM....
 
Usually higher memory speed does not equate to higher performance, but that is only because we have reached such high speeds to begin with that we are in the realm of diminishing returns.

However, there are a few specific circumstances where higher speed RAM can help.

1. APU's designed by AMD. GPU's in general need obscene memory bandwidth, hence why we are at 5GHZ GDDR5 on some video cards now. When you put a GPU on a CPU die and expect them to use the same memory controller, it can really hamper the GPU's ability to access memory quickly. Using higher speed RAM helps tremendously with most applications using the iGPU (particularly games) and benchmarks have proven it.

2. As someone else mentioned, there are still some non-gaming applications that can benefit from higher speed RAM. For gaming, there are very few games nowadays that can benefit from higher speed RAM. I have seen some unverified benchmarks from end-users and Corsair (biased source) suggesting that Battlefield 4 might actually be one such game, but considering all the other problems with this game, upgrading your RAM to squeeze more FPS might not be worth it.

Therefore, if you aren't gaming on an AMD APU or heavily into RAM-intensive tasks like rendering or encoding, then it is very likely that high speed RAM will not provide any benefits.
 
What about the Haswell GPU (specifically non-Iris Pro, as that has the 128MB eDRAM cache)

Just curious because I am currently using the Intel graphics (4600) with 8GB RAM (1600) in single channel mode. The second stick is arriving tomorrow... I'm interested to see if I notice any difference since that will double my memory bandwidth and it relies solely on system RAM...

Does BF4 have any built in benchmark I can use? I know Metro LL does.
 
melk said:
What about the Haswell GPU (specifically non-Iris Pro, as that has the 128MB eDRAM cache)

Just curious because I am currently using the Intel graphics (4600) with 8GB RAM (1600) in single channel mode. The second stick is arriving tomorrow... I'm interested to see if I notice any difference since that will double my memory bandwidth and it relies solely on system RAM...

Does BF4 have any built in benchmark I can use? I know Metro LL does.
Click to expand...

You will see a significant improvement due to the extra bandwidth. GPUs need all the bandwidth they can get because every pixel you draw requires access to mountains of data. And since the data is constantly changing from one frame to another, cache can only help so much - you need lots of raw bandwidth.

Most other computing loads (including game engines) care more about memory latency: code only occasionally accesses memory, so performance is only impacted by how fast you can resolve a request. Most other computing loads are also easily cached: modern cache architectures keep you out of memory more than 95% of the time, so you can imagine that (for your average case) even DOUBLING ram throughput would make very little performance difference.

Thus the claim made above: for a "gaming system" (assumes a discrete GPU), memory speed and bandwidth are less important.
 
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Almost no difference for main memory, thanks to CPU cacheing.

Big difference for video card memory, thanks to lack of GPU cacheing.
 
Well my 2nd stick of 1600 showed up today. Going to Dual-Channel mode has helped significantly on the Haswell 4600 IGP.

Metro LL Bench

1x8GB
Average Framerate: 12.53
Max. Framerate: 29.83 (Frame: 2011)
Min. Framerate: 4.57 (Frame: 1478)


2x8GB
Average Framerate: 18.59
Max. Framerate: 38.96 (Frame: 2018)
Min. Framerate: 7.20 (Frame: 2460)


NovaBench shows RAM Transfer speed as 8272 MB/sec to 14002 MB/sec


Also found this which seems to indicate that even between 1333 and 3000 that speed alone has negligible real-world gains, at most maybe ~1 fps
 
radgoos said:
Oddly enough everyone's signatures in this thread so far seem to agree on Patriot RAM....
Click to expand...

I bought whatever was cheapest at the time. 2x4gb for under $25 and 6x4gb for under $60 can't be beat.
 
melk said:
Well my 2nd stick of 1600 showed up today. Going to Dual-Channel mode has helped significantly on the Haswell 4600 IGP.

Metro LL Bench

1x8GB
Average Framerate: 12.53
Max. Framerate: 29.83 (Frame: 2011)
Min. Framerate: 4.57 (Frame: 1478)


2x8GB
Average Framerate: 18.59
Max. Framerate: 38.96 (Frame: 2018)
Min. Framerate: 7.20 (Frame: 2460)


NovaBench shows RAM Transfer speed as 8272 MB/sec to 14002 MB/sec


Also found this which seems to indicate that even between 1333 and 3000 that speed alone has negligible real-world gains, at most maybe ~1 fps
Click to expand...



I'd like to see this same test with 1x8GB and then 2x4GB. I still imagine it would be faster with the dual channel sticks however.

Regarding the topic, I just stuck with 1866 on my 16gb of ram. Not worth the extra cost for 2400 to me, especially when it may hinder any OC potential of the CPU.
 
I changed from 4GB 1600MHz CL6 to 8GB 2400MHz (running @ 2200MHz due to SB CPU) CL11 because it was the cheapest 8GB upgrade available.
Couldnt tell the difference in performance in any game.
 
Nenu said:
I changed from 4GB 1600MHz CL6 to 8GB 2400MHz (running @ 2200MHz due to SB CPU) CL11 because it was the cheapest 8GB upgrade available.
Couldnt tell the difference in performance in any game.
Click to expand...

That's really surprising! You don't notice any improvement to at least the start up of games compared to the 4gb ram config you used prior? Such a large increase Id have expected it to be quite noticeable.

I went from 4GB of 1066 DDR2 to 16gb of 1866 DDR3 and it was a highly noticeable increase, but I imagine that's due to switching generations from DDR2 to DDR3.
 
Nope diddly squat difference and I was looking hard for any.

edit
just found my benchmarks at the time but they also included a newer video driver.
GTX580 video card

Before, with 310.33 driver:
Heaven 3.0 96.4fps 2427

X3:TC bench. 135.225fps

Crysis Warhead 59.93fps


After, with 314.22 driver:
Heaven 3.0 99.0fps - 2495

X3:TC bench. 139.064fps

Crysis Warhead 60.36fps
 
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somebrains said:
This argument has been around since the PC133 vs PC166 days.
Click to expand...

Its been around since the development of the CPU, its an integral part of how a computer works.
There are optimal speeds of memory for each CPU, depending on the function of software being run as well.
 
somebrains said:
This argument has been around since the PC133 vs PC166 days.
Click to expand...

With the wide range of speeds available to us, it's more about finding out where the point of diminishing returns is. For SB/IB, that was 1600 mhz CAS 9. For Haswell, that's 1866 mhz CAS 9. For AMD APUs gaming on the iGPU, there doesn't seem to be a point.
 
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