Which RAM to choose?

[davidstrongarm]

Hi all,

In the following month I am going to build a system with an i7 980x CPU, two ATI Radeon HD5870 2GB Eyefinity 6 Edition GPUs, and a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Motherboard. It will be used primarily for gaming, but also for graphics work and some movie rendering. I will be running three 24" monitors @ 1920x1280.

I have done a lot of reading but I am still a little stumped on how to choose a good set of RAM sticks without wasting my money on something that I don't need. This is a list that I am trying to choose 6GB (3x2GB) of RAM from. I understand that the higher the clock speed the better, and the lower the timings the better.

But, for example, this Corsair kit (1600MHz, 7-7-7-20) is double the price of this G.Skill kit (1333MHz, 9-9-9-24).

Will these two kits perform very differently or is the difference likely to be extremely subtle?

I'm asking because I've done a lot of regarding RAM sticks but I can't really find any info regarding just how important and timings really are. I would like to get a good set of sticks but I don't want to fork out extra money for RAM which is overkill, and I have no idea which ones to choose.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Dave.

 

[lsv]

The Corsair kit has much tighter timings... so at the same clock yes it will be much faster.

Here's a great article of timings vs. high clock

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/tight-timings-high-clock-frequencies,1236.html

 

[Emulex]

i'd worry about stability over 1-3% synthetic speedup. 3% faster but 10% more crashes isn't worth it to me.

I'd go for 3x4gb of the 9-9-9-24 for the same price as 3x2gb at 7-7-7-20 imo.