RAM speed measurements

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AlexTheTaco

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Jul 12, 2014
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There are different speeds of RAM and I was wondering what the best speed would be for gaming. I saw a post that said "minimum of 1866 and 1600 is good". Does that mean the lower the number the better the speed? If so, what is the best speed for gaming.
Thanks.
 
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Tradesman1
1600/9 is considered entry level and acceptable as most games simply use DRAM as a data conduit, faster DRAM can result in the gains of a few 2-4 FPS from one freq to the next (say 1600-1866), and more and more in gaming 1866 is becoming the entry point as in general it currently runs about the same price as 1600 (and many 2133 sets are also comparably priced)...faster sticks excel more in multi-tasking, video, imaging, VMs, CAD, and other memory intensive apps or using large data sets.
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chris987

chris987

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Jun 10, 2013
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what matters is speed and latency. the higher the speed and the lower the latency the better. however your cpu - mobo will define the ram you can run. higher than 1866mhz ram require very strong imc (intergrated memory controller) so will be better suited for intel cpu. however, for gaming 1600 -1866 mhz is still enough.

 
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InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
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May 18, 2007
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The only PCs that yield more than single-digit performance improvements in everyday applications and gaming from going from 1066 to 1866+ RAM are computers that rely on their IGP.

In most other cases, the benefits of going from bargain 1600-10-10-10 to the highest-end DDR3 available are slim. Latency is not such a big deal since the memory controller interleaves commands between memory banks to keep data moving - that's why shaving latency from 10 to 9 cycles only yields a 0-1% performance improvement instead of ~10%.

Latency mostly matters in unpredictable algorithms like parsing and compiling code where the CPU and memory controller's prefetch algorithms will be wrong much if not most of the time and ends up having to rely on directly on the RAM.
 
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Tradesman1

Tradesman1

Legenda in Aeternum
Jun 5, 2013
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1600/9 is considered entry level and acceptable as most games simply use DRAM as a data conduit, faster DRAM can result in the gains of a few 2-4 FPS from one freq to the next (say 1600-1866), and more and more in gaming 1866 is becoming the entry point as in general it currently runs about the same price as 1600 (and many 2133 sets are also comparably priced)...faster sticks excel more in multi-tasking, video, imaging, VMs, CAD, and other memory intensive apps or using large data sets.
 
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