Time for RAM upgrade?

NiCoM · Jul 27, 2014

I was reading reviews of hardware when i realised that some say you'll need atleast a decent 1866mhz kit to your haswell processor, saying that 1600mhz will actually be a kinda bottleneck (though i know it's probably not that bad of a bottleneck).

im running a 1333mhz CL9 2x4GB budget-end kit from kingston on my i5 4670K @4,4Ghz 1.26v, using the ASUS Maximus VI HERO board and a Seasonic G-series PSU.

I would like to know if a 2400mhz CL10 2x8GB kit could benefit me in any way since 1600mhz seems to be the kind of "limit" for haswell.
Looking at the Vengance Pro from corsair, they're able to go 2400/CL9, 2133/CL8, 1866/CL7 according to a trusted reviewer:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7575/corsair-vengeance-pro-review-2x8-gb-at-ddr32400-101212-165-v

(don't think about the increased size of GB, it's there because i won't make a half-upgrade)

Thank you for your time

rusabus · Jul 27, 2014

I bet that in most real-world benchmarks you'd see less than 1% difference between them. The only place where I think you'd notice a real difference is if you were using the on-board graphics of the Haswell CPU and you run a gaming benchmark. Then the faster RAM would certainly matter, but otherwise, I'd save my money for something else if I were you.

--Russel

Suztera · Jul 27, 2014

You probably won't notice much difference switch from 1333Mhz to 2400Mhz for normal usage like browsing and gaming.

evan1715 · Jul 27, 2014

no, it wont bottleneck the haswell.
the noticeable difference between 1333 to 1600, or 1600 to 2400, wouldnt be worth the money.
if u have the extra money, why not, but is it worth it performance per dollar, not really.

any ddr3 8gb is good enough.
if u dont already have an ssd, that would be a better idea for upgrade.

volcanoscout · Jul 27, 2014

I had this same discussion with tradesman1 a while back. Based on his recommendation and the two studies linked below, I switched from 1866 to 2400 on an i5-4670K/Hero VI and an i7-4790K/Hero VII.

What I was expecting was something similar to the statements in the posts above. I haven't benchmarked them yet, but I can tell you that I noticed a significant increase in speed in my normal applications. My Adobe programs didn't seem to care one way or the other, but everything else did. Whether the difference is worth the price is completely subjective at the consumer level, but I would guess the bump in performance would be even more significant going from 1333 to 2400.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/haswell-ddr3_8.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/10

Tradesman1 · Jul 27, 2014

volcanoscout :

________________

Yes people don't really understand that a benchmark you're just doing it - a single thing - faster DRAM shines when using multiple Apps/windows, memory centric programs, (like video, CAD, VMs, etc), even in gaming you can pick up a few FPS for each jump from 1 freq to another

NiCoM · Jul 28, 2014

i was planning on getting that 16Gb kit, make a 2-4GB RAMDisk for temporary files from Game DVR (AMD's version of ShadowPlay), temoprary files are when it just records everything in games and deletes recording when it reaches a time limit (etc. if you've set it to pre-record 60sec, 240sec, 360sec).

My only other options was a SSD, which would wear down pretty fast by that constant writing on the disk or my Green HDD that carries all my games, which makes my games stutter alot when i use it and i can only record in bad quality because of write speed.

Im mostly using my pc for games, lots of Google Chrome (normally i only have 4-7 tabs at once), photo editting (uncommon), video editting (rarely).
I do play a fair ammount of games whitch are CPU instensive, open world games, some games with physics (etc. BF4, GTAIV, planning to get GTAV, BeamNG, Dayz)

My pc doesn't really have anything that needs a upgrade (specs are on my profile), only thing that's still from my pre-built pc i bought 1-2 years ago is that budget 1333mhz/CL9 2x4GB kit. (just realised i didn't even put that in my specs list) :/

I could probably resell my i5 4670K and get the i7 4770K for the same cost too, though that would require a ton of hassle compared to the RAM replacement. Im actually not 100% sure what the best upgrade at this pricerange would be.

But im feeling these two sticks run pretty poorly, i often get a crash where my pc just freezes, when it restarts my Chrome forgets all my plugins and Steam also forgets some of my settings set for games, this also happened with my pc before mayor upgrading and the only possible part left that could cause it are the Ram sticks.

volcanoscout · Jul 28, 2014

For CPU-intensive gaming, the i7 will be better of course, but that would be a dubious benefit if your system is prone to crashing. As far as overall system speed, it's a toss-up whether an SSD or RAM would benefit you more - each will speed up your system, but in different areas.For $150-$170, you can get a good set of 2 x 8GB Trident X 2400/10 or a 250GB SDD which will be big enough for your OS and all of your games. Or you could split the difference and get 8GB of ram AND a 128GB SSD. 8GB of RAM is plenty for the applications you described.

Have you run MemTest or any other RAM diagnostics? If your RAM is the problem, obviously that should be at the top of your upgrade list. After that, I would add in an SSD. If after adding those your system still isn't where you want it to be, look at your CPU.

What are you running for a GPU and motherboard?

NiCoM · Jul 28, 2014

volcanoscout :

My pc

i5-4670K @ 4.4Ghz
ASUS R9 290 DirectCUIIOC
ASUS Maximus VI Hero
H100i w/Noctua NF-F12
SSD 120GB OCZ Agility4
HDD 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green
Seasonic G-550W
EDIT: oh and that 2x4GB 1333mhz/CL9 Kingston budget kit.

My game library is 100+ games, i play games pretty randomly, so i can't really put most played games on a SSD. :/
I'll look for my USB drive so i can boot Memtest86 and look for errors.
Im currently trying to use a 1GB Ramdisk for pre-recording, works fine though my used memory hits ~4,4GB with just 4-tabs in Chrome, Skype, Steam and varius small programs running.

RowTheBoss · Jul 28, 2014

To be completely honest Speed Demon, You really don't need to upgrade anything! Unless you have and want to spend money on something that could get you 1-5 FPS more than what you are already equipped with. Your bottleneck would definitely be the Ram or the HDD, However we all have our bottlenecks one way or another! Don't uprage because you read articles that say you should be upgrading. Think about the upressed children in Africa who would trade food for a computer with a 6 year old pentium and 2gb of ram! The moral of this story is kids... Don't do drugs.

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