Battlefield 4 loves high speed memory

[Cloudfire777]

Pretty interesting. I thought 1600MHz was more than good enough.

Interestingly, Battlefield 4 takes a pretty holistic approach to the system it runs on. Isolating bottlenecks used to be pretty easy: you were either CPU limited or GPU limited. Either your graphics hardware was holding you back or your processor was. As long as you weren’t running 4GB or less system memory, RAM wasn’t an issue. Yet with Battlefield 4, your RAM is important again in more ways than you might have expected.

I’ve been doing testing on Haswell to determine whether or not higher speed memory could improve system and specifically gaming performance, especially with multi-GPU systems. My intuition and some of the research I’ve read online suggests that Haswell’s “sweet spot” memory speed has actually jumped from the time-honored 1600MHz to 1866MHz. What I found with Battlefield 4 is remarkable, though. Testing on an i7-4770K overclocked to 4.4GHz and two overclocked GeForce GTX 780s in SLI, I discovered that memory speed affects Battlefield 4 performance in a very measurable and perceptible way. Check this out:

Running at 1920x1200, or slightly above the most common resolution of 1920x1080, bumping our 32GB of Dominator Platinum from DDR3-1600 to its XMP speed of DDR3-2400 raised the average framerate a staggering 22.7% and the minimum framerate a still impressive 9.7%

http://www.corsair.com/us/blog/bf4-loves-high-speed-memory/

 

[ShintaiDK]

Already posted in the memory and storage section.

 

[Attic]

lol

I clicked thinking i'd get good news about the merits of my speedy 16gigs of DDR3-1600.

Silly me thinking DDR3-1600 is considered high speed these days.


Massive gains there for the hardware being tested.

 

[Grooveriding]

Would have liked to see some testing done in between; 1866, 2133 as well. Gains may not be linear. Of course Corsair would love to sell lots of 2400mhz RAM.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'd like to know if it was sensitive to timings or just loved bandwidth because my 1600MHz ram will overclock to 2500MHz (that's the highest I've gone) but the timings are fairly lose at 11-13-12.

 

[Gloomy]

not VC&G

 

[blackened23]

Cool. I have 16GB of 4 DIMM DDR3-2400 just sitting here, maybe it's time to put it to use.

Haven't really felt a need to push memory speeds prior to this.

 

[Techhog]

Well, now I REALLY regret not reading the user reviews of my RAM kit. It was falsely advertised as 1600, but in reality 1600 is unstable for most people. :/

 

[Teizo]

Just tried my 1600 RAM at 2400 last night and got an error. Grrr. Does 2133 just fine though. Of course, it defaulted to Cas 10. Maybe 11 would work.

 

[moonbogg]

I wouldn't mind tossing some faster ram in the rig if it would help things. Or screw it perhaps. We'll see.

 

[krumme]

I dont beliewe those results is representive of bf4. Looks suspecious to me.

Is it single channel?
What about non sli configuration and not this crazy 4.4 ghz on haswell but eg. 4.0?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

All I can say is time after time more memory has proven to be better than faster memory. I doubt there will be any real difference between memory speeds.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Even if this is the case. I'm saving my money for a platform upgrade once DDR4 comes out.

 

[Teizo]

More memory only matters if you run low on available RAM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FL_TextgAQ

 

[tential]

Already posted in the memory and storage section.

Would have never known about it though if it wasn't posted here.

Sometimes I get the feeling BF4 is software bound.
It checks the specs you have, then gives you framerates.

No sound card -5 FPS
Ultra High Speed Memory +20 FPS
4K Monitor +50 FPS (Only applicable at resolutions below 4K until TRI SLI or CF. Then this is unlocked for 4K too!)

But no one has the release version of BF4 yet so maybe all of these major performance differences between OS, Memory, and CPU will be smoothed out by the end of November (because you always need a couple of patches first these days).

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I dont beliewe those results is representive of bf4. Looks suspecious to me.

Is it single channel?
What about non sli configuration and not this crazy 4.4 ghz on haswell but eg. 4.0?

Crazy 4.4? I rolled BF4 at 4.8GHz on my Haswell and it was still necking.

 

[exar333]

Even if this is the case. I'm saving my money for a platform upgrade once DDR4 comes out.

This. Still rocking 4x channels of ~1500mhz and doing fine...

 

[krumme]

Crazy 4.4? I rolled BF4 at 4.8GHz on my Haswell and it was still necking.

Give it a rest.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Give what a rest? Enthusiasm?

 

[njdevilsfan87]

It'll be interesting to see if this holds. I think this is the first time in like a decade that I've seen RAM speeds really have such a difference.

 

[Deasnutz]

This means quad channel would be the best for BF4 by far.

I'm guessing it has to do with keeping the CPU happy and as busy as possible.

 

[imaheadcase]

You know I just noticed that my ram was only operating at 866mhz for some reason. I guess asus boards do that if you overlock with auto settings? I cranked it back up to 1600mhz and seems to be fine. Odd.

 

[Grooveriding]

This means quad channel would be the best for BF4 by far.

I'm guessing it has to do with keeping the CPU happy and as busy as possible.

Could very well be. SB-E & IB-E was decimating the other platforms in BF4 benchmarks. Could not of been CPU so much as memory, or a little of both, but i7 chips in general didn't seem to be maxed out.

 

[krumme]

Give what a rest? Enthusiasm?

Enthusiasm is not enough to get hw to 4.8 for more than 5%
Most wont go past 4.3 and some wont even go there.
Is it right to delid your cpu and do personal binning to get the effect of ram in bf4? Not real testing imho. Unserious.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

https://docs.google.com/a/overclock...NjlDYWl6ZnV4OVlNc0lMU1V3c1E&usp=sharing#gid=0

I didn't delid my chip, and I see more than enough 4.4GHz or higher chips listed on an enthusiast website to believe the 4.4GHz used in the test is more than fine.

Paul from newegg did an auto overclock run with I think 6 or 7 i7-4770ks using an ASUS board and all of them did more than 4.4GHz with less than 1.3v a few were hitting 4.7/4.8.

If you want to perpetuate a myth by all means, I only offer contradictory evidence to your words.