1333 Vs 1600 ddr3

[JD111]

My system specs are

i3 540
MSI H55 mobo
2x 4gb 1333 ddr3

I am buying another 2x 4gb Ram and will use the old Ram on another system , should i buy 1600 mhz or 1333 mhz , 1333 sells for about 60% of the price of 1600mhz ram here , so is it worth buying 1600mhz? I have seen benchmarks showing very little difference in performance between 1333 & 1600.

will 1600 mhz be better suited for overclocking than 1333? i am currently running the cpu at stock but want to overclock in future.

 

[lsv]

If you're adding 1600mhz ram to 1333mhz ram your Bios will by default, set the 1600 to 1333. You can always try to OC the 1333 stuff to match the 1600 but as you said the performance difference is so small that you're fine running everything at 1333.

 

[JD111]

The old Ram will be used in a different PC , i wont run my old 1333 with the new Ram.

 

[lsv]

The old Ram will be used in a different PC , i wont run my old 1333 with the new Ram.

Oh crap my bad man. I guess my first coffee today wasn't enough.

If you see 1333mhz ram for almost half of what the 1600mhz stuff costs then go for the cheaper stuff. You'll barely notice a difference and sometimes the slower ram will have tighter timings.

 

[JD111]

Thanks

 

[JD111]

I bought 2x4gb Corsair vengeance 1600 mhz , price difference between this and 1333 wasn't much so i bought this ,

Now i have a problem running this at 1600 , if i enable XMP to run this at 1600 it also automatically overclocks my cpu from 3 ghz to 3.6 ghz ,

i don't want to overclock the cpu right now so i am running this at 1333 , can i reduce the ram timings to 8-8-8-24 or 7-7-7-20 from 9-9-9-24 to get better performance at 1333mhz ?

 

[lsv]

I bought 2x4gb Corsair vengeance 1600 mhz , price difference between this and 1333 wasn't much so i bought this ,

Now i have a problem running this at 1600 , if i enable XMP to run this at 1600 it also automatically overclocks my cpu from 3 ghz to 3.6 ghz ,

i don't want to overclock the cpu right now so i am running this at 1333 , can i reduce the ram timings to 8-8-8-24 or 7-7-7-20 from 9-9-9-24 to get better performance at 1333mhz ?

That's strange, I just bought a 12 gigs Gskill kit for my x58 and using XMP it stayed at 1600mhz without any OC. Can you post your mobo/etc ?

 

[JD111]

I have i3 540 and MSI H55M-P33 , maybe something to do with the Clarkdale processor? When i enable XMP it increases the bclk to 160 from default 133.

 

[lsv]

Yea XMP does it, apparently if you're over what the processor uses it'll take that clock and sort of easy overclock. In any case yea you can run tighter timings. I'd run some stability tests if you go too low but 1600 9-9-9-24 Can probably do 8-8-8-24 @ 1333.