Basic RAM question: 16gig vs 8gig

Dwood1968

Honorable
Oct 28, 2013
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Hey all,

I have a fairly simple question to pose. I am in the process of upgrading my gaming PC and came across one of Newegg's EBlast promotions for RAM. Initially I wanted to buy http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231468 for $82 but am now thinking about just buying two sets of http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231416 for a total of $118.
I'm wondering if having 16gigs of low clock/low latency is going to have a 44% better performance in games vs the 8gigs of high clock/high latency (44% is ~ difference in price).
The games I will be playing are mainly CoD:Ghosts and Rift with a mix of other FPS games. The supporting cast for the rig will be an i5 4670k and GPU will be a 7950 Boosted model on an ASUS MAXIMUS VI Hero board. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated!
 
Solution
No, it's definitely not going to be a 44% improvement. In fact it won't be an improvement in 99.9% of current games. I believe BF4 is one of the first games ever to show any difference with more than 8 GB RAM, and even then it's not much. Instead, the slower memory may actually end up reducing performance a little bit in many games.

PS: The DDR-2133 CL11 kit has lower latency than the DDR3-1600 CL9 kit.
No, it's definitely not going to be a 44% improvement. In fact it won't be an improvement in 99.9% of current games. I believe BF4 is one of the first games ever to show any difference with more than 8 GB RAM, and even then it's not much. Instead, the slower memory may actually end up reducing performance a little bit in many games.

PS: The DDR-2133 CL11 kit has lower latency than the DDR3-1600 CL9 kit.
 
Solution

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Straight out performance wise they are about equal - the 2133 has a wider bandwidth, so there is a ever so slight overall performance increase, but the CL9 at 1600 means more operations in a given time than the 11 of the 2133 set. If thinking 2133 sticks a CL9 would be best followed by a CL10, both will offer straight performacne increasing=s over the 1600/9 and the still existant wider bandwidth of 2133 just adds more to it

and No, the CL11 2133 set is not lower latency than the 1600/9 set
 

Latencies are stated in clock cycles. DDR3-2133 (1066 MHz) has faster - shorter - clock cycles than DDR3-1600 (800 MHz). The CAS latency of DDR3-2133 CL11 is about 10.3 ns, the CAS latency of DDR3-1600 CL9 is about 11.3 ns.
 

PyjamasCat

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Mar 20, 2013
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11,360


^I agree. Your CPU does not support quad channel anyway, so it would only be more stress for the IMC. If you really want 16GB, get 2x8GB sticks.