More Vs Faster RAM

[CallSignFancy]

Just wanted to know the Pros/Cons of more and faster RAM and the two compared, also what are each good at/better for (Gaming, Graphical design, ect.).

 

[Th3pwn3r]

When it comes to ram you only need what you're going to use. If your utilization is over 80% I'd say you're close to needing an upgrade. You only need FASTER ram if you're bottlenecking, in the long run you really can't have ram that's too fast so...

Imagine it like people who own a Ferrari, the car can probably do 200mph but most wouldn't ever go that fast, however, it's nice to know you have the power/speed available if you did want/need it.

 

[CallSignFancy]

When it comes to ram you only need what you're going to use. If your utilization is over 80% I'd say you're close to needing an upgrade. You only need FASTER ram if you're bottlenecking, in the long run you really can't have ram that's too fast so...

Imagine it like people who own a Ferrari, the car can probably do 200mph but most wouldn't ever go that fast, however, it's nice to know you have the power/speed available if you did want/need it.

okay that explains a lot, thank you and nice analogy by the way.

 

[steffeeh]

To see if you need more RAM, just open up the Task Manager while doing different things to see the actual usage of RAM in percentage - if you're near maximum many times, you may eventually need more at some point.

As for RAM speeds it's a bit controversial topic. Until recently the main concept has been that you only need high speed RAM if you really need to save a few minutes from really long video rendering sessions etc (unless you have RAM with ancient speeds that is, making any faster RAM speed an obvious improvement).
Though lately a new group has arisen claiming that RAM speeds matters again for gaming as many are hitting such high framerates (those with GTX 1080 or Titan X Pascal) that the not-the-fastest RAM can't keep up that well anymore, cutting down the framerates.
This is of course also controversial, but reading the topic they surely make a great point that it's time to do new professional testings on how RAM speeds affect the latest tech - something that are yet to come.

But then we have yet another factor for RAM, and that's RAM timings (in simple english the latency of different tasks in the RAM sticks). This is even more controversial since I have nothing to back up my claims with, but both me and a friend of mine notice an overall better responsiveness in using the computer in cutting down the timings while keeping the same RAM speed (2400MHz in my case). Take that info as you want.

The bottomline however is that the main importance for RAM is to get the size you need - speeds and timings etc are just exotic features.