How important is lower latency and voltage?

[Ronin13]

Picking an 8GB DDR3 1600 kit for a new build on an ASUS Z97-AR board, no OC.

Have narrowed my choices down to these three:

Corsair Vengeance 9-9-9-24 1.5V $68 (CML8GX3M2A1600C9)

G.Skill Sniper SR2 9-9-9-24 1.25V $75 (F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2)

Crucial Ballistix LP 8-8-8-24 1.35V $78 (BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU)

Are tighter timings worth an increase in price over the CL9 @ 1.5V kit?

Is lower voltage?

If so, would you rather go with CL9 @ 1.25V or CL8 @ 1.35V?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Depends. Is/are your primary applications memory-bottlenecked? (Answer: probably not.)

If you're not memory or latency limited, then there's no benefit to the tighter timings.

I'd probably go for the 1.25v because it should result in slightly less heat, energy use, wear'n'tear, etc.

I once had an Athlon XP rig that I ran SETI@Home with. If I increased my FSB, memory speeds, or decreased my CL timings, I saw a pretty-much linear increase in crunching performance, the thing was so memory bottlenecked. Yikes.

Don't see that kind of thing as much today.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Looking at the motherboard -- an ASUS budget model, likely comparable to the Z97-A and quite a decent choice -- and considering your likely choice of a processor that won't be intended for overclocking, I can see where you're going with these choices.

But I'm wondering if you really, really want to live with DDR3-1600 when you might find a similar kit of 1866 for not much more.

Even so, I'd start with the low-volted G.SKILLs, and I'll explain why.

I can't vouch for the other makes and models, but the G.SKILLs should easily overclock to 1866 -- either with a voltage bump to somewhere under 1.5, or with loosened timings. But especially, with or without an overclock (to which you may be averse), they will most likely allow you to run them at command rate = 1. That gives a nice little speed-bump of its own. Some ASUS boards will actually "impose" a CMD=1 in the XMP configuration, and you'd actually have to dial them back to CMD=2 just to meet the G.SKILL default spec!

Truth is, for that chipset and the processors you might choose from, you'd actually get the margin of benefit from DDR3-2133:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=G.Skill_DDR3-2133-_-20-231-468-_-Product

Those do no good for me with my Sandy Bridge processor, but you'd actually get some benefit with any quad-core Haswell.

On the other hand, and other posters will volunteer the same, it's not a very big improvement. But then again, it's not much of a difference in price, either. And now that I look again, for some odd reason, they're actually cheaper than the DDR3-1600's.

So, limited to the three models you linked, go for the Snipers.

 

[Ronin13]

Thank you both.

Forgot to mention, CPU will be mid level i3 or i5, usage is browsing and some light, low res gaming.

From the reviews I've seen, the 1.25V G.Skills don't appear take well to increased voltage for a frequency OC.

But I won't be OC'ing (apart from enabling XMP if that's considered OC'ing) and I'm happy running the RAM at 1600.

From another review, I've seen that the Crucial kit can run it's CL8 timings at T1, when XMP is enabled. But that might be motherboard dependent?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's one thing to consider:

Skylake boards are being made that take both DDR4, and ones that take DDR3L (low-voltage).

If you get the low-voltage RAM now, you may be able to transfer it over to a Skylake rig, if you get the appropriate mobo for it.

 

[Dasa2]

the difference between i5 4590 and 4690 is small and the performance difference between 8-8-8 and 9-9-9 is about half that but then the price difference is much lower
1600c7 will perform close 2133c11
if you were to oc the cpu i would suggest 2400 10-12-12 1.65v and load its xmp

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Thank you both.

Forgot to mention, CPU will be mid level i3 or i5, usage is browsing and some light, low res gaming.

From the reviews I've seen, the 1.25V G.Skills don't appear take well to increased voltage for a frequency OC.

But I won't be OC'ing (apart from enabling XMP if that's considered OC'ing) and I'm happy running the RAM at 1600.

From another review, I've seen that the Crucial kit can run it's CL8 timings at T1, when XMP is enabled. But that might be motherboard dependent?

Good that you did the leg-work to make that discovery. I understand completely that you aren't OC'ing, but I'll say this.

If you can't OC by just loosening the timings for the higher speed at the same spec voltage, it's not worth the trouble, IMHO. I still say, go for the G.SKILLs with the 1.25V voltage spec.

 

[Ronin13]

Thanks guys.

I must admit, I was leaning towards the Crucial kit for the combo of (slightly) lower than 1.5V @ 1.35 and the tighter timings (even though it's not on the planned board's QVL, but Crucial says it should work just fine).

But if going from CL9 to CL8 really doesn't matter for my basic usage scenarios, I guess the lower voltage G.Skills does seem more attractive.

If my board doesn't 'impose' T1 when running the G.Skill's XMP (as suggested it might), would it be something worth dialing in manually, or are we in the realm of 'won't make a noticeable difference'?