Please help me pick out DDR 2133 RAM

[ibex333]

You can see my rig in the sig.

Basically I recently saw some you tube videos which show that even with old hardware such as mine, fast ram can give a very significant boost in FPS when playing games.

My current ram is 1333 MHz. Kingston Value RAM.

I am planning to pair the new replacement RAM with a GTX 970 to get more life out of my aging computer, which is still plenty adequate for the games I play. (Fallout 4, Company of Heroes 2, Mass Effect 2 & 3, Modern Warfare 3)


I do not understand what's going on with CAS latencies... My currect slow ram is CAS9, but most 2133 RAM is CAS11. I do see a few CAS 10's but they are pretty expensive, and CAS9 2133 RAM is out of stock or non existent everywhere.


Now, here's my question... Purely for gaming, should I buy CAS10 or CAS11 is fine? Just how much difference are we talking here?


According to various benchmarks I saw online the difference between 1333 and 2133 RAM is huge... easily 10 fps in some games and more! But how should I go about CAS?


Thanks!

 

[Elixer]

CAS 9 or better, low latency is best.
The slower stuff will NOT give you much of a performance increase, if at all, except on bechmarks.
Also, it is highly dependent on which game, not every game will you see a huge difference, and sometimes, you won't see any difference.
See here http://www.overclock.net/t/1366657/ddr3-1600-vs-2133-is-there-a-difference-in-game for some more input on the matter.

 

[Dasa2]

newegg has 2x8 2133 9-11-11 1.6v $85

to give you an idea of how important timings are there is some 2133 11-14-14 kits out there and these are slower than 1600 8-8-8

here is some tests i ran a while back with 2133 11-11-11 vs 9-11-10

there is a collection of ram speed tests here
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37837493&postcount=14

maybe try overclocking your current ram first it may do 1600c8\c9 with some extra v maybe even 1866

 

[LTC8K6]

I don't think you will notice any difference.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6

The amount of ram is far more important, and you have plenty.

 

[myocardia]

You need a new video card, not new RAM. Your 4.5 Ghz 2500k is WAY faster than that 270x. Until you upgrade to a GTX 970 or R9 390-level card, anything else you do to that computer is an absolute waste of your time and your money.

 

[Dasa2]

I don't think you will notice any difference.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6

The amount of ram is far more important, and you have plenty.

double the cpu speed in those tests and you would get the same result there gpu bottlneked which is true for most games and faster ram only improves cpu performance

op is planing on getting a gtx970 at the same time and playing some games that do have cpu dependent sections of gameplay which is where the faster ram could improve performance up to 20%

 

[LTC8K6]

double the cpu speed in those tests and you would get the same result there gpu bottlneked which is true for most games and faster ram only improves cpu performance

op is planing on getting a gtx970 at the same time and playing some games that do have cpu dependent sections of gameplay which is where the faster ram could improve performance up to 20%

I don't see much, except in synthetics. They used a 2600K, and they overclocked it. He already has 1333 cas 9 ram.

In real world stuff, I just don't see much difference with SB.

The extra bandwidth gained with the overclocked CPU doesn't exactly translate into much. The first pass of the x264 test reveals a 7% advantage for DDR3-2133 over DDR3-1333 on our overclocked CPU while the stock CPU shows a 5% increase. The increase for DDR3-1600 over DDR3-1333 is 3% for both our overclocked and stock CPUs. Once we move on to the second pass, there's no discernible advantage for faster memory on our overclocked system. The Cinebench test results are every bit as unimpressive with overclocking as at stock: overclocked or not, faster memory makes no real difference (though the faster CPU clock speed definitely helps a lot).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/7

Final Words

I think we confirmed what we pretty much knew all along: Sandy Bridge's improved memory controller has all but eliminated the need for extreme memory bandwidth, at least for this architecture. It's only when you get down to DDR3-1333 that you see a minor performance penalty. The sweet spot appears to be at DDR3-1600, where you will see a minor performance increase over DDR3-1333 with only a slight increase in cost. The performance increase gained by going up to DDR3-1866 or DDR3-2133 isn't nearly as pronounced.

 

[nerp]

The faster ram can be the difference between 95 and 99 fps. Not really worth it in the majority of cases. Get a better CPU and an SSD and don't waste the money on faster ram, especially if not overclocking.

 

[Dasa2]

it seems tests like x264\3dmark are not as heavy on the cpu cache\ram as cpu limited games
my best guess is that games seem to overflow the cache more or are more likely to require random files not preloaded into the cpu cache then the cpu has to holt its work while it waits on the files to come from the ram

the page i linked above shows plenty of examples of actual cpu limited gameplay seeing large gains for sandy\ivy\skylake in the 10-20% range
with my 3770k being a crap overclocker i see larger gains from overclocking ram than the cpu
on the 2600k as the image above show in arma3 2133c9 4.3ghz is at 55fps while 1333c9 4.9ghz is under 50fps

is 10-20% only in cpu limited sections of gameplay worth the cost of upgrading the ram? maybe maybe not depending on the user but for gaming its better bang for your buck than upgrading from a 2500k to i7 4790k or skylake while keeping the same 1333 ram

 

[myocardia]

on the 2600k as the image above show in arma3 2133c9 4.3ghz is at 55fps while 1333c9 4.9ghz is under 50fps

The article you linked above used a $650 GPU that is a minimum of 300% faster than the OP's $199 in 2012 GPU. Until you buy the OP a GTX 980 Ti, any money whatsoever that he spends on his system will get him zero extra FPS, since he's already completely GPU-bound, with his current GPU. He could be running an LN2-cooled, 6.0 Ghz i7-5960x, and his FPS wouldn't go up any at all, since he's being limited by his slow GPU, not by his CPU or his system RAM.

 

[Dasa2]

The article you linked above used a $650 GPU that is a minimum of 300% faster than the OP's $199 in 2012 GPU. Until you buy the OP a GTX 980 Ti, any money whatsoever that he spends on his system will get him zero extra FPS, since he's already completely GPU-bound, with his current GPU. He could be running an LN2-cooled, 6.0 Ghz i7-5960x, and his FPS wouldn't go up any at all, since he's being limited by his slow GPU, not by his CPU or his system RAM.

he said his buying a gxt 970 that puts him in the same ballpark gpu performance wise as my 290 $270 which is a fair improvement over the 7970 used for those arma tests

but yes even with the 970 there will be parts of games many games that will show no improvement from faster cpu or ram as the link to the anandtech ram benchmark shows

i like this example of a gpu bottlnecked test with a pentium outperforming the 6700k with a gtx980 in shadow of mordor 1080p
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1321

coh2 and fallout 4 which the op will be playing both benefit from faster ram\cpu in a fairly large portion of there gameplay when the op gets the gtx970

 

[myocardia]

he said his buying a gxt 970 that puts him in the same ballpark gpu performance wise as my 290 $270 which is a fair improvement over the 7970 used for those arma tests

Sorry, I either missed that part of the OP, or had forgotten it. I wasn't able to type up my post all at once, I was interrupted. And yes, there will still be some games that won't benefit any or much at all, but with a GTX 970, he'll be able to take advantage of his processor's speed, and should see comparatively large gains in Fallout 4 and CoH2.

 

[ibex333]

Guys, please watch this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4


It is what made me want to upgrade RAM. Pay attention when he is showing the RAM sticks upclose. Notice it's not CAS 9.

 

[razel]

Here's the fantastic memory scaling article from Anandtech summarizing the performance differences between RAM latency and bandwidth speed:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/3

Essentially, you can reduce latency either by lower CAS or faster bandwidth.

 

[Dasa2]

Guys, please watch this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frNjT5R5XI4


It is what made me want to upgrade RAM. Pay attention when he is showing the RAM sticks upclose. Notice it's not CAS 9.

being 2400 11-13-13 if they didnt bother to change timings im guessing there running c11+ timings in all tests