# Does RAM speed make a difference?



## OrbitzXT (Jan 4, 2012)

On a fairly recent system, how much impact does RAM speed really have? I have DDR3 1600 MHz at the moment, I recently upgraded from 1333 MHz, the benchmark (Maxxmem) I ran showed a nice little improvement, but does that really translate into higher FPS or other real world performance increase? My motherboard allows for 2133 MHz RAM, and my friend was looking to buy 1600 MHz RAM so I was thinking of upgrading and giving him mine if it'll really make a difference. So does it matter much aside from benchmarking numbers?


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## erocker (Jan 4, 2012)

The difference is minimal.


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## jpierce55 (Jan 4, 2012)

Latency matters more. I can actually turn the frequency up on my cpu/memory, but need to set the latency slower, it does better like this.


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## Deleted member 3 (Jan 4, 2012)

jpierce55 said:


> Latency matters more. I can actually turn the frequency up on my cpu/memory, but need to set the latency slower, it does better like this.



I highly doubt you'll ever notice the difference in latency in any real world application.


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## INSTG8R (Jan 4, 2012)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> I highly doubt you'll ever notice the difference in latency in any real world application.



That's about it. I mean outside of benchmarks you would hard pressed to see any kind of difference in RAM speeds.


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## _JP_ (Jan 4, 2012)

In your specific case, I advise you to read this.


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## overclocking101 (Jan 5, 2012)

if you can get a good 2133mhz at like 9-9-9-24-1T i'd take that. if thhey need looser timings I wouldnt bother. the speed difference is minimal.


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## ViperXTR (Jan 5, 2012)

Games:
http://93.185.96.114/hardware/proce...ne-vykonem-staci-levnejsi-ddr3-pameti?start=8

Apps
http://pctuning.tyden.cz/hardware/p...ne-vykonem-staci-levnejsi-ddr3-pameti?start=6


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## INSTG8R (Jan 5, 2012)

The article JP posted pretty well summed up what I already knew. 1600 is the "sweet spot" for Sandy Bridge the gains at anything higher are so minimal it's not really worth the extra cash.


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## qubit (Jan 5, 2012)

_JP_ said:


> In your specific case, I would advise you to read this.



Great link, thanks. 

I got bog standard DDR3-1600 for my 2700K because I remembered something about fancy high speed RAM not making a difference on it and it's nice to be confirmed right.


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## hat (Jan 5, 2012)

Seems like DDR3 is so fast even low-end 1333 kits are more than enough to meet today's memory needs.


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## INSTG8R (Jan 5, 2012)

qubit said:


> Great link, thanks.
> 
> I got bog standard DDR3-1600 for my 2700K because I remembered something about fancy high speed RAM not making a difference on it and it's nice to be confirmed right.



Yep ditto. Couldn't beat the price on my Vengence, great bang for the buck.

You need to update your specs Mr.


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## Xiphos (Jan 5, 2012)

all the benchs i've seen so far are all for the intel camp.
how does memory speed scale on the amd side?


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## qubit (Jan 5, 2012)

INSTG8R said:


> Yep ditto. Couldn't beat the price on my Vengence, great bang for the buck.
> 
> You need to update your specs Mr.



Yeah, I got Vengeance too - two blue and two black to match the memory slots, lol for a total of 16GB. No, I don't need that much. 

I will indeed be updating them, but it's not yet been commissioned (now there's a big word from qubit) so the old specs remain in place for now, but I'll put a little note on them.  It's still currently sitting on my testing frame having unspeakable things done to it with software setup and testing...

I'll be updating my Sandy build thread soon about this, too.


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## INSTG8R (Jan 5, 2012)

qubit said:


> Yeah, I got Vengeance too - two blue and two black to match the memory slots, lol for a total of 16GB. No, I don't need that much.
> 
> I will indeed be updating them, but it's not yet been commissioned (now there's a big word from qubit) so the old specs remain in place for now, but I'll put a little note on them.  It's still currently sitting on my testing frame having unspeakable things done to it with software setup and testing...
> 
> I'll be updating my Sandy build thread soon about this, too.



Stop fiddling with it already and get in a case and start using it


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Jan 5, 2012)

With 1366 the difference between 1600mhz @ say cas 6 vs 9 was pretty notable even just in daily use. With 1155 the emphasis seems to be more on clock speed. Either way it's by no means epic.


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