New memory not living up to expectations.

[mcchurchmouse]

Hello all! First time poster long time reader...

I decided I might be able to squeak some more juice out of my system for photoshop so I decided to upgrade a few things one at a time with RAM being my current problem.

My system excluding RAM:

Gigabyte 990fxa-ud3
AMD Phenom II X4 840T (can't seem to unlock cores so it has 4)
Samsung 830 128GB SSD (OS + Programs)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB (Data)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB (Dedicated Scratch Drive)
GeForce GT610 with 2GB of dedicated memory
400W Power Supply
Windows 7 64-bit

My old RAM consisted of 2 - 4GB PNY DDR3-1333 and 2 - 2GB Micron DDR3-1333
My new RAM consists of 2 - 8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3-1600

I had to go in and manually input the timing on the new RAM (9-9-9-24) as well as bump up the speed to 1600mhz. Based on my research I have everything set up correctly and CPU-z seems to agree. The problem comes in when I run PerformanceTest on my memory both before and after: there is less than 10% difference. In fact, the new setup is running similar scores to DDR2-6400 RAM! I have tried various combinations of ganged and unganged as well as several physical arrangements of the sticks on the MB. Nothing seems to make much of a difference.

I'm going to try and post some pictures, links to pictures at the very least. Anyone have any ideas and does anyone think something is amiss somewhere here?

Thank you for your time!

 

[rolli59]

Memory by itself does not make a huge difference in speed going from 1333 to 1600 is not much considering that usually the slower ram has faster timings. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-870-1156,2482-5.html
Having more of it when you need it, it does matter!

 

[mcchurchmouse]

Ok, I suppose I can understand that. That could account for lack of a performace jump, but what might cause my RAM setup to be benchmarked at 50% of identical RAM on a"random" computer wiith the same exact [model, make, size...] of RAM? Outside of bios setup, it seems there shouldn't be such a disparity in benchmark. The rest of my system isn't that bad (I hope), I just put the motherboard in last week!

 

[mcchurchmouse]

Best answer selected by mcchurchmouse.