Speed or Quantity?

[Blueblade3000]

I'm planning on upgrading my system with an ASRock Z77 Extreme4 motherboard and an Intel Core i5-3350P Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz. My question is about the memory. Would I be better off with something like 8GB of DDR3 2400, or 16GB of DDR3 1600? What will give me better performance, speed or quantity? Mostly for gaming, occasional multitasking. Thanks.

 

[Novuake]

Neither, 8GB is fine, scales well up to only 1866MHz, after that you are just blowing money. Get 8GB of DDR3 1866 9-10-9(or better) and you will be right as rain.

Spend the left over money on the 3570K or a better GPU.

 

[Xttony]

Both quantity and speed have their benefits. For example if windows uses 1gB memory when 4gB ram is installed, it will automatically use more memory when you install more memory. More Ram can store large volume of data rather than use hdd which will speed up process.
As per the speeds are concerned, high speed of ram can increase the speed in which it processes the data.
So both are equally important and you need a balance of both as per your requirements.

Here if you need 16gB go for it. If you don't need 16 gB then just stick to 8gB.
1600MHz is not a significant speed boost unless both the cards have same timings which is very unlikely.
This set of cards have high speed
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231511
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231563

 

[Novuake]

Both quantity and speed have their benefits. For example if windows uses 1gB memory when 4gB ram is installed, it will automatically use more memory when you install more memory. More Ram can store large volume of data rather than use hdd which will speed up process.
As per the speeds are concerned, high speed of ram can increase the speed in which it processes the data.
So both are equally important and you need a balance of both as per your requirements.

Here if you need 16gB go for it. If you don't need 16 gB then just stick to 8gB.
1600MHz is not a significant speed boost unless both the cards have same timings which is very unlikely.
This set of cards have high speed
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231511
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231563