Which DDR3 for Haswell, 1600 vs 2400, any difference?

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tarmiricmi

tarmiricmi

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Hello all,
i have a dilemma. Building a new PC, will be using Haswell CPU (P g3258 and in a close future upgrade it to i5 or i7). Mobo is H81 chipset. I'm on a budget. I'll be buying 2x4=8 Gb RAM.

Now, most of the Haswells support 1600 DDR3 RAM (g3258 1333 but let's ignore that for time being). I have heard that there is something called XPS or something (memory profiles), option in the BIOS that enables larger memory bandwidth or utilization of faster memory than declared.

What would be best buy for 2x4 sticks of DDR3? Is there any noticeable difference in, for instance 1600 vs 2400? Or is the faster memory than declared 1600 just throwing the money (although the price difference is negligible)? I'll be browsing, office and multimedia apps, and light gaming, i'm not into heavy numbers crouching. If there is speed benefit, i would like to buy the fastest memory there is.

Thanks in advance.
 
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spentshells
I would simply choose a 1600Mhz set. The price vs performance numbers are simply not there. You wont be able to use the ram at the rated speeds then you are simply spending money for nothing.
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Titan
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Between 1066MT/s and 2166MT/s, the difference is typically in the neighborhood of 5% overall. If you focus on a specific performance metric that is more sensitive to memory bandwidth and latency though, such as frame time variance, the improvement can be 20-30%.

If you can get 2400MT/s for practically the same price and overall latency as 1600MT/s, sure, get 2400MT/s. In terms of bang per buck though, it might not be worth bothering with if the difference is more than 10%.
 
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junkeymonkey

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reason I bring that up was looking at reviews of that chip[ g3258 ] if any spoke on memory oc'ing it they were able to push it to 1600 .

so with it it seem you get 1600 memory and hope for the best over 1333 ? so if looking for running high speed over 1600 it seems best to stick with a unlocked ''I'' chip ..
 
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Titan
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The Pentiums are simply i3 with HT disabled and since the G3258 is unlocked when paired with an appropriate chipset/motherboard, the memory can easily be bumped to 1600MT/s. The G3258 "20th Anniversary Edition" Pentium is basically a Pentium-K.
 
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tarmiricmi

tarmiricmi

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I'll go with 1600 CL9, more precisely
Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 XMP HyperX Savage HX316C9SRK2/8

I have also had a dilemma 8vs16 Gb but for time being i don't see the reason to go with 16 Gb (especially being on a budget).
 
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Titan
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If you have any reason to believe you may need more than 8GB in the foreseeable future, I would strongly recommend considering getting 16GB now: DDR3 prices are near record lows right now and when they go back up, they are unlikely to come back down again and you may end up paying more than twice as much for the extra 8GB then - if you built a PC a year ago, 8GB would have cost you as much as what 16GB costs today.
 
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tarmiricmi

tarmiricmi

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Good thinking, thanks. I'll probably stay on this Haswell build for at least next 5 yrs, i'm planning to use g3258 at the moment and in a half year or so, replace it with 4790k. I'll try to strech my wallet for 16 Gb :)
 
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