Trying to learn more about memory overclocking.

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tsuneo6

tsuneo6

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Aug 22, 2014
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Dear community,

Over the last year I've been active on the forum, helping people and learning a great deal myself.

Now I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to memory, and how the memory speed affects the performance (I have the general idea but that's where it stops) but I'd like to know a great deal more!

I also know there are a whole bunch of articles about this. But which one is the most complete and best explained. if you remember any good article, please redirect me to it

Many thanks in advance

Tsuneo

 
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tsuneo6

tsuneo6

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Aug 22, 2014
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I do have a programming background, I studdied 3 years of electronics-ICT, I know the function of the RAM, how it is adressed etc. I(m just trying to get a mroe in depth understanding of how it works precisely. how much of an impact the speed has on both games and applications. if, for example 4 megabytes @10MHz would be jsut as good as 2 megabytes @ 20MHz (just fictional numbers ofcourse! and not taking dual channel in concideration) I also dont have the faintest idea of what the timings stand for, but I am going to read up on that! I just need a bit of a headstart to throw myself at the pile of information that's waiting for me.

as I read RAMspeed has a big impact on AMD APU's, but not so much on dedicated GPU's or intels intergated GPU's, why is that?


it's questions like those that are keeping me bussy nowadays


-also, not sure if this should be a 'question' or discussion. perhaps I should reopen this as a discussion on the forum.
 
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gilbadon

gilbadon

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Jun 16, 2008
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Clock Cycle Period: 1/Frequency. The higher the frequency of ram, the faster the period of one clock cycle which is better.

Timing: Clock Cycles for ram to do an action. There are a bunch of different timings. The lower the better. If a timing is low, the ram can do an action (such as give a value to the CPU faster) improving the performance of the current action.

The combination of faster frequency to create a shorter clock period and short timings creates multiplicative effects for speed. However, most applications for standard computer use, the ram speed is not the bottleneck. With computations that require HUGE number and math manipulation such as video and audio decoding and encoding, ram is used up the wazzu. If the ram is used 100%, then it needs to wait for some to be freed to continue operation. This leads to extremely slow performance and faster and more ram could benefit the system a ton. Another instance where faster ram could help is when the performance of the application is limited by how quickly the CPU can talk to the memory. If the memory cannot quickly get in contact with the CPU (slow timings), then the system will lag despite only have small ram usage (say 20% memory being used).
 
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JackNaylorPE

JackNaylorPE

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First half is true...2nd is a half truth...which is made clear in the 1st link above:

I'll argue with myself .....

1. Faster RAM has no impact on gaming.... going from 1600 to 2400 speed is a waste of money .... look at the image below for Metro LL and I'll prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. 116.8 / 116.7 = 0.085 % ... I win !

image007.png


2. Faster RAM has a very significant impact on gaming.... going from 1600 to 2400 makes my entire system 11% faster ....look at the image below and I'll prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. 177 / 159 = 11.3% .... I win !

image006.png


Like any 'system" the performance of your PC is limited or what peeps like to say "bottlenecked" by the component which hits its upper limit. A test case where you test various RAM speeds on a single mid range card using average fps as the barometer tells us nothing about:

a) premium single card situations
b) multiple card situations
c) minimum fps performance

Lesson here.... the test makes a case only for the components in the test.

Slower RAM has a greater impact on minimum fps. Slower RAM has a greater impact in multi-card situations. In short, the impact of more RAM, faster RAM, lowe CAS RAM on discreet cards and applications is highly variable.... there is no "right" answer unless ya refine the question.
 
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iam2thecrowe

iam2thecrowe

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Jul 4, 2010
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Ram speed should have an impact on most integreated gpu's, but the more powerful the integrated gpu, the more benefit it will see from faster ram. AKA the bottleneck. It has less impact on dedicated gpu's because the gpu has its own, much faster ram. As JackNaylorPE has described, it can be very scenario dependent also. Some games benefit from faster ram, some do not, it can also depend on the resolution and in game settings. So yeah, there is no definitive answer that covers all (theory of everything), it is scenario dependent. I generally say, for the few extra $$ it costs to get, say 2133mhz ram over 1333 for example, i say just invest the few extra $$ and get the faster ram, then you know you are less likely to run into a scenario in the future where ram speed is an issue.
heres another link, the most popular game bf4 benefits from high speed memory quite a bit:
http://www.corsair.com/en/blog/2013/october/battlefield-4-loves-high-speed-memory
 
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