blakecarter

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hello, am looking to buy 16gb of ram but i came along a set of 2 x 8gb sticks of ram for 99 bucks on sale but its only 1333. i figured it would be a good deal but i never see myself going to 32 gb of ram in a desktop. but for $130 bucks i can get 4x4gb of ram at 1866. would i notice that big of a difference in the 1333 - 1866 or should i just get the 2 sticks of 8gb?
 

blakecarter

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ops sorry. ill be using the FX 6100 cpu. i have the 990fx ud3 mobo and i was thinking that someone told me that it would use 1866 without being overclocked. i didnt really wanna try to overclock my system well as of right now. if i were to use 1333 or 1600 would they preform just daily task alright? i dont game or anything so i dont have to have 1866 i was just going to get it cause someone had told me it would just go in without being overclocked.
 


There's a fairly well known issue with using bulldozer and 16GB of ram. It won't operate at 1866 speeds. The best you can hope for is ddr3 1600 speeds with 16 gigs. 8 gigs of 1866 however is recommended because bulldozer will benefit from the higher speed. Bulldozer likes DDR3 1866 memory.
 

PurpleHayes

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That depends on what you're doing with the computer. I'm assuming you need the 16 gigs for something intensive like video/image editing, audio software, rendering, virtual machines etc. If you're doing something like that, go with the 16 gigs of 1600; otherwise, go with whatever's cheaper, since 8 gigs of RAM is more than enough for any typical usage (heavy gaming, websurfing, document/presentation development etc)

**Edit: There's not a huge difference between 1600 MHz and 1866 MHz for RAM; while it's true that Bulldozer can exploit the higher frequencies well, if you're using something that can actually see the difference between the two you'll probably be using a lot (16 gigs) of RAM anyway
 

blakecarter

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yes i will be using alot of autocad/photo editing, also have a couple virutal machines running. but thanks for that.. ill be sure just to get 16gigs of 1600... thanks for the help guys..

was going to stay with g.skill, any difference in the sniper and ripjaw series?
 


Only in terms of aesthetics to my knowledge. Gskill has become quite popular and with good reason, they sell a good product and are very competitive on price. I'd agree that 16GB is a better option from a cost effectiveness perspective as well as the usage. As a side note, folks are hoping AMD addresses this issue with later refreshes of BD. I'm just not sure how much one can depend on that considering their recent strategies. Looks like they'll be putting more effort into APUs instead of more traditional desktop CPUs.

If you do get the 16GB, you should note both those series have pretty tall heatspreaders so if you have aftermarket cooling there may be a clearance issue.