1066 vs 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM

[agsteague]

I am new to the world of PC building and I am thinking of building a new system based on the ASUS P6T motherboard and the new i7 920. I have a question about the difference between 1066 and 1600mHz RAM. Is it worth the 100 dollar price jump from 1066 to 1600mHz? Is the performance boost really noticeable? Thanks in advance for your responses.

 

[powerbaselx]

I am new to the world of PC building and I am thinking of building a new system based on the ASUS P6T motherboard and the new i7 920. I have a question about the difference between 1066 and 1600mHz RAM. Is it worth the 100 dollar price jump from 1066 to 1600mHz? Is the performance boost really noticeable? Thanks in advance for your responses.

Hi. I've just posted a similar question than yours but between 1333 and 1600.
After that i found this information on Intel website:

http://ark.intel.com/cpu.aspx?groupId=37147

So, if Intel specs points to DDR3-800 and DDR3-1066 memory types, why should one buy DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600 if it doesn't want to OC? Is there anything else missing here regarding QPI?

 

[wimcle]

If you have no plans to overclock then 1066 is fine.

but on my x58-ds4 mobo (and I would guess on others) there is no multiplier lower than the 2.0 which is 8x baseclock (133Mhz) = 1066, thus if you want to run in that 133-200 range you will need ddr3-1600

 

[Pineapple]

Hello,

I have a similar question and do not quite understand the whole new thing with the Intel CPUs that have QPI or DMI concerning RAM-Speed.

In older system I always thought you could find the perfect RAM speed by looking at the FSB-Speed.

For the new i7-870 for example Intel states that 1066MHz DDR3 and 1333MHz DDR3 work both. But what is the actuall speed of the DMI of the CPU? (but as I guess things with the DMI are not the same as with FSB, due to the concept of DMI, isn't it?).


In earlier systems, when you had a system that could run DDR2 PC2100 and put 2700 in it it slowed down the 2700 to 2100. How is this with the Intel i7 Series?

Do they slow down the 1333MHz to 1066 or do they gain a speedboost of higher Speed RAM?

 

[Pineapple]

sorry I detected a mistake:

"In earlier systems, when you had a system that could run DDR2 PC2100 and put 2700 in it it slowed down the 2700 to 2100. "

In my example it has to be DDR1 instead of DDR2, of course.