RAM and gaming performance, worth it to upgrade?

[Spawne32]

Quick question regarding memory and FPS, would it be beneficial for me to buy DDR3-2400 memory with some fast timings, such as mushkin enhanced redline 10-12-12-28 or should I stick with my DDR3-1600 crucial ballistix elite with XMP, 8-8-8-24. Realistically what would be the advantage of the faster timing with a 860K chip @ 4.6ghz.

 

[Yuriman]

See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/7

Haswell isn't Kaveri, but I imagine you'll be rather less in need of bandwidth rather than more.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That DDR3-2400 might be able to pull DDR3-1800 at CAS8 (or better) which is going to provide you with better latency. There aren't many bare-CPU numbers out there for Steamroller cores regarding their relationship with memory latency and NB speed (especially since most Steamrollers are Kaveris with an NB limitation of 2 ghz), but odds are that you'll see some nice performance improvements in memory/cache-sensitive apps if you can raise your memory clockspeed while maintaining the same timings.

edit: for point-of-reference, I have an old Pi Black kit (2x2gb, DDR3-2200 CAS10) that is currently running DDR3-1600 6-7-6-18. There is every reason to believe that a modern DDR3-2400 CAS10 kit should be able to do better than my Pi Blacks. Just uh, be careful that you get some dual-rank memory. Kaveri/Steamroller wants that stuff. I am not sure about the Mushkin kit you're looking at, but this G.SKILL kit is supposedly dual-rank, most of the time.

 

[Spawne32]

See here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/7

Haswell isn't Kaveri, but I imagine you'll be rather less in need of bandwidth rather than more.

The summary there basically says to avoid DDR3-1333 and 1600, I read an article that was earlier dated that measured 1333 to 2400, however the 2400 timings were very loose compared to what is available today, as I imagine they werent really available in the earlier days of DDR3. The price is the main reason I am considering it, the crucial kit I have is brand new and was just replaced by crucial under the lifetime RMA, and the mushkin DDR3-2400 with the tight timings is actually cheaper then what I have, figured id sell the 1600 and buy the 2400.

 

[Yuriman]

In the single-GPU gaming benchmarks, there wasn't a single test that showed any difference between 2400 CL10 and 1600 CL8. In non-gaming tests where improvement was apparent, it's single digit percentages. IMO, not worth the effort as it's far to small an improvement to notice without repeated benchmarking and recording of numbers.

 

[Spawne32]

That DDR3-2400 might be able to pull DDR3-1800 at CAS8 (or better) which is going to provide you with better latency. There aren't many bare-CPU numbers out there for Steamroller cores regarding their relationship with memory latency and NB speed (especially since most Steamrollers are Kaveris with an NB limitation of 2 ghz), but odds are that you'll see some nice performance improvements in memory/cache-sensitive apps if you can raise your memory clockspeed while maintaining the same timings.

edit: for point-of-reference, I have an old Pi Black kit (2x2gb, DDR3-2200 CAS10) that is currently running DDR3-1600 6-7-6-18. There is every reason to believe that a modern DDR3-2400 CAS10 kit should be able to do better than my Pi Blacks. Just uh, be careful that you get some dual-rank memory. Kaveri/Steamroller wants that stuff. I am not sure about the Mushkin kit you're looking at, but this G.SKILL kit is supposedly dual-rank, most of the time.

What is dual rank? Never heard of that before.