High Speed RAM - Is it Worth it? DDR3 1333MHz vs 2400MHz Test
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
876 words · ~4 min read
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Corsair RM series power supplies are optimized for silent operation click now
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to learn more I get asked so often lonus
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what RAM should I get what speed RAM should I get what capacity RAM should I
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get so capacity is pretty simple that's how many things you can have going at
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the same time so you look at your current system how much RAM you have how
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much your utilization is how much more would you like to be able to utilize there you go if you're not using
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professional applications like you know Da Vinci resolve and after effects and
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premere all at the same time you're probably good with anywhere from 8 to 16
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gigs of RAM for quite a while now when
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it gets into speed things get quite a bit more complicated because it's
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phenomenally confusing for people who don't know much about RAM speed there's
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frequency which will go anywhere on DDR3 from around 1333 all the way up to
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3,000 mahz and then there's latencies
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which are different okay so frequency predominantly affects the maximum
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bandwidth so that's how much data can be transferred to and from it at a time
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whereas latency predominantly affects how quickly it can respond to a request
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so these two things can affect performance in different applications in
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different ways however how much they affect things you might be surprised
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that it really isn't as much as you might expect so what we decided to do is
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we took some high performance DDR3 2.4
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GHz memory so that's 24 400 MHz memory and we ran it at 800 MHz okay we ran it
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at 1333 MHz 1600 MHz at what I'd
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consider to be a typical uh cast latency 9 so cl9 1,600 at cl8 so you tend to pay
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a little bit of a premium for a cl8 kit versus a 1600 kit 1866 and then for good
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measure at 2400 MHz then what we did is
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so we ran two games as well as cinebench just to give you some idea how it runs
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in games versus synthetics so here you
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can see the graph in front of me which basically goes okay well if you're
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looking at the same capacity RAM running all these different applications and
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different speeds you're looking at not a whole lot of difference in performance
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because what often happens with higher bandwidth so that it's higher frequency
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RAM is that it tends to sacrifice latency and then as you tighten up
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latencies you tend to sacrifice the maximum frequency to the point where
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they actually cancel each other out a lot and you end up spending more money
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for higher frequency RAM that might look better on paper but doesn't really
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deliver much in terms of a better
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performance you know number in the real world even our DDR 3800 which you
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actually can't really buy um we couldn't even find that um even our DDR 3800
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isn't really so much slower that it's going to make a difference so um with
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that said let's bring up the next graph which is the amount the number of
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dollars you're paying per FPS we took our gaming benchmarks and we graphed how
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much it's costing you per FPS because the frames per second didn't really
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change the performance didn't change much so spending more was basically just
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spending more and there are reasons why you might want better memory so uh for
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example if you like the aesthetic of a particular RAM kit versus another one
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that would be a reason to spend more money on it or if it has like cool lighting effects on it for example that
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might be another reason to spend more money but beyond that the way that I
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personally shop for money shop for money I shop for money the way I personally
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shop for RAM is I look for a brand that I trust so it should come with a
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lifetime warranty if it's worth its salt
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um it should be something that you know you can't find a whole lot of oh yeah
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this Sal all failed on me or whatever else because most of the good brands out
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there have pretty good reputations these days there's been a lot of consolidation
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and a lot of the bad RAM companies are just gone um and and that's really what
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I look for and you know who has a special edition RAM that like matches my
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motherboard really well stuff like that so there you go guys that is my take on
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memory yes there are situations where
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more memory bandwidth is needed and you
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can't possibly have enough most of these exist more like in servers not really in
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desktop environments leave a like on the video if you liked it leave a dislike if
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you disliked it and leave a comment if the results were not something you were
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expecting to see and as always don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips