Intel i5/i7 and DDR3-1600 Memory

[rancineb]

I have a question about what memory would work best for the processors I'm looking at. I'm between the Intel i5-2500K and the i7-2600K processors. When I go on the Intel website, it says that the memory types for them is DDR3-1066/1333. Does that mean DDR3-1600 wouldn't work (or take advantage of the better performance) with these processors? I was looking at getting the Corsair Vengence 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1600 memory.

 

[amuffin]

Yes it works. Look at the motherboards, they support all the way up to 2133mhz ddr3 ram.

 

[rancineb]

Thanks. I figured it would be fine, but what I saw on Intel's website drew some caution.

 

[nforce4max]

Which gen i5/i7 do you have? The older gen is very easy to work with and doesn't need XMP but the newer SB in some ways does. Both support much higher than officially stated by Intel. It is only for the mobiles must you be careful and worry about support.

Had to reread post (moving large folders atm) it will work just fine but its best to have xmp just in case as support might depend on the board.

 

[jimmysmitty]

The Corsair Vengance is all XMP. I have 16GB of it and it works fine (DDR3-1600).

To be 100% honest though, even at 1333MHz most apps wont have lower performance, at least desktop apps. Only server apps really need the extra memory bandwidth.

But the 2500K with the Corsair Vengance 1600MHz will put you at about 20GB/s memory bandwidth which is an insane number, well for me moveing from LGA775 that had a max of about 5GB/s with DDR2 1066.....

 

[HEXiT]

there is little to no difference by throwing hugely fast ram at the cpu until you get into higher numbers like 32gigs. the only place you will see any difference is in benchmarks but in applications anything over what the cpu natively supports is pretty much wasted. the extra speed can help reduce access times to higher ram addresses but really its marginal at best.
if you want to get the best from your ram run it at 1333 and lower the latencies. this in turn will make the ram more efficient and increase bandwidth witch again increases efficiency...
currently i use 1600mhz ram at 1333 running at cas 7-7-7-16 witch actually increases the through put over the same ram running at 1600 8-8-8-24 by about 2% it may not seem like a lot, but 2% more efficient is still more efficient... to be honest if i can find cas 7 2100+ ram i would still run that at 1333 and take advantage of the lower potential for the latencies. i may loose overall speed but like i say you wont see any real difference by running faster ram but you do by running lower latency..
my dream ram would be 1333@ cas 6 or less if i could... i dunno if its worth going any lower as the cpu cache has latencies 2 and that could cause a choke point/ potential bottleneck.(but id have to check that)

 

[sonexpc]

The only big different between use DDR3 1333 and DDR3 1600 is when customer running integrated Video Card ....

I have a customer use A8-3870 with Integrated AMD Video it jump from 5.9 to 6.5 in window experience index...

 

[amuffin]

In apu's faster the ram the better^^ You might as well consider 1866mhz-2133mhz optimal for apu's.