DDR3 Memory Question!

[GuitarGuy11]

ok im building a computer but im stuck in this situation, whats would be faster?? 4gb of DDR3 1800 or 8gb of DDR3 1600??? they are about the same price, and i cant spend more than 200 bucks on the ram! so whats the best choice? also btw im gonna be running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

 

[Maziar]

Timings,speeds and voltage are mostly important for OC'ng and they don't have a great impact on general performance.
So 8GB is faster but current games and apps will work fine with 4GB.

 

[jitpublisher]

You need to buy 4 gig of DDR1333. Unless you are overclocking your processor, anything else is a complete waste of money. If you are planning on overclocking, (your CPU) get 1600mhz. Anything over 4 gig is also a waste unless you are using your PC for design work. Faster memory speed does not mean a thing in everyday use.

 

[GuitarGuy11]

well i forgot to mention, i would be using it for video, music, and some photo editing. also i would be playing some games not many. and i would watch hd content.

 

[geofelt]

There is very little advantage to faster ram or better timings. Synthetic benchmarks look impressive but application throughput or FPS do not change much. Perhaps 1-3%.

Go with 8gb. Even DDR3 1333 would be ok if it was significantly cheaper than 1600.

More ram is always better because it reduces contention among all your concurrently running tasks. Some programs like CS4 can even take advantage of lots of ram.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Read this:

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=3589

Specifically written for the i7 but logic holds across platform

 

[Lutfij]

get the bus speed that has the same frequency as your processor, that way when u'l want to over clock it... you'l get somewhere.

and yeah as geofelt mentioned - higher ram timings look impressive when under synthetic benching but show lil difference when in real world application.

if u game alot then they matter to some extent - but hey, get the 4gb with bus of less than 1600mhz.

since u'l put some stress on ur rig, wat brand u looking into?

i run windows7 64bit - 4gb will get u a long way

 

[GuitarGuy11]

well im gonna get some gskill ram

 

[r_manic]

Best answer selected by r_manic.