12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz Or 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz

Hi! I would appreciate if someone could explain me which option is better!
- 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 6 x 2048MB
Or
- 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz – 6 x 4096MB

It would be amazing if you could explain why, the importance of the differences between speed and memory!
Thanks a lot!

I'm thinking about buying a Alienware ALX X58 lol And I want to think about the future lol I want the system to last some years lol
I want to buy the best option! lol That' the idea! loool
So...
- 12GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 6 x 2048MB
Or
- 24GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz – 6 x 4096MB
??? lol Wich of them is going to give a best overall preformance?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

look in the toms reviews somewhere they actually found excessive memory slows things down a touch, save yourself the cash and invest in a worthwhile upgrade like an SSD / better or extra graphics card or a sweet monitor.

The problem with 24GB of ram is the rest of your compnants will be superseded well before the ram is - reminds me of my first computer Cyrix 6x86 133+ 32mb ram (most people ran 8 or 12) and a matrox millenium g200 12mb and 2x 16 mb voodoo 2 cards - it didnt run anything well because the processor was a load of kak.

Anyway It might be usefull to say that the processor is a Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme 3.86 GHz with 8MB Cache

well 12 GB is over kill too IMO

by the time u will need 12GB ram it will be uber cheap and ud prolly be doing a full upgrade

toms hardware showed a few weeks back that 3,6 and 12 gb ram gave the same preformance on games

12 gigs has some slight advantages in a few memory heavy apps (compared to 6 gigs). 24 gigs is overkill. There's no reason to go to 24 gigs, especially with that kind of price premium (You do realize that for $2200, you could build an entire system that is quite fast, right). Oh, and if you built one yourself with an i7 920 (rather than that i7 975 EE), you could overclock it just as fast. The 975 can be pushed higher than a 920, true, but both will almost always exceed that 3.86GHz number you mention.

Here's a comparable if not faster build but without the charge of having Alienware do everything:

Mobo: P6T deluxe V2 ($289)
CPU: i7 920 ($279) (Overclockable to at least 3.6GHz regardless of stepping, and if you get a D0, which is nearly guaranteed now, you could probably get over 4GHz without much trouble)
GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 295 ($1069)
PSU: Corsair HX1000W ($239)
RAM: 12 gigs Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600($358)
CPU cooler: TRUE ($75)
Optical drive: LG Blu-Ray Burner ($250)
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 ($169)
Hard drives:2x Intel X25-M 160GB SSD, RAID 0 ($1238, and faster than that 512GB model in the Alienware) plus a WD 1TB Caviar Black storage drive ($99)
OS: Vista Ultimate, OEM ($175)

Total: $4240
Comparable Alienware (as best I can replicate it): at least $6500, probably more

You really should consider building your own - note that the build posted above is by no means trying to use good value parts either - you could drop quite a bit from the cost by getting rid of the Dominator RAM, and going with cheaper SSDs. My point was to show just how good of a build you could get while still staying cheaper than the Alienware. You could also go with full liquid cooling, but I'm not familiar enough with that to know which components to recommend. EVGA has some nice liquid cooled GTX 295s though that come overclocked as well (you would need to already have the rest of the liquid cooling loop to run them though).

Okay unless you are doing auto-cad, daz 3d studio, vmware or something like that, 24gigs is stupidly overkill for your needs, 12gigs, is overkill but since its cheap nowadays then its okay to get it i guess, but even 6gigs is enough for you. Thats all I have to say.

Errata:
I'm very grateful ^^

I run memory intensive computations in MATLAB, and used 12 gb ram to reduce the number of programming nuances involved with dealing with large datasets. (removing variables, chopping into smaller blocks, these sorts of annoyances), and even here I have to have huge amounts of data loaded (in the obvious range) before I have to resort to boring programming tricks.

I don't see how someone who isn't routinely having 12 gb of crap needed to be accessed would even need 12 gb, and 24 is just not worth the price IMO. I'd much rather save 2 grand.

from my knowledge on memory i would say 24gigs is beyond overkill, 12 gigs is probably also overkill but will become the standard for mid & high end gaming machines in a year or two....

Someone mentioned turning off the page file with more than 4 gigs or memory, please explain how u do this? and how it helps? and to what extent?

12gb should do you fine, unless you want REAL bragging power in which case, build your own pc