Is 1333 RAM really necessary with an AMD A10 APU?

ar1speedboy

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Nov 24, 2014
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I'm planning a budget gaming build for a price of £345 (excluding keyboard, mouse and monitor but including Windows 8) and I've managed to do it with the A10-6800K (couldn't squeeze a good dedicated GPU in) and 4GB (2x4) RAM at 1333.

However, from what I'm reading online people are recommending much higher speeds of RAM with the APU, but doesn't this cancel out the whole point of gaming on an APU in the first place (which is budget)? How important is the RAM speed in practice, and at what settings do you think I could play games at with 1333 RAM)
 

neieus

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Since the APU doesn't have any memory of it's own it will utilize the system memory instead. The reason why you want faster RAM is that the since a dedicated GPU has DDR5 and you're system is using DDR3 there will be a performance hit. How much that hit can vary based on the game.
 

neieus

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Just did a Google search and found an article that can explain it better. While this article is focusing on dedicated graphics cards the important point to take a way from it is the performance difference between DDR3/DDR5 performance.

http://www.goldfries.com/computing/gddr3-vs-gddr5-graphic-card-comparison-see-the-difference-with-the-amd-radeon-hd-7750/
 

Vergilangleos

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Apr 22, 2014
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your integrated gpu will use your system memory as gpu memory , so as you know gpus using GDRR5 memory which is very fast and if you want replace them with system memory you need high speed rams and 4gb isn't enough , at least get 6gb memory (2gb for gpu , 4gb system)
 

con635

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Can I just say it would be cheaper and better to base your build around the a8 7600 which is more modern, supports mantle etc and benches the same as 6800k for much less tdp. Go check reviews, that £10 or so you save could be the difference in 1333 and 1866mhz ram which = more performance.

 

bmacsys

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1333 and 1600 will severely hold back your framerates. There are benchmarks all over the web showing slow ram is a fail with the igpu on apu's. 1866 seems to be a sweet spot. 2133 and 2400 are a small bit better but you get diminishing returns. 1866 cl9 would be better than 2400 cl11. Dual rank sticks are what you want to look for.