Advice for new ram purchase

Hi everyone, I've found this website to be useful in the past just never had a reason to post. I was looking for some direction in selecting the best ram for my current computer. http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2400401 is a link to what I'm running with.

My question is this, given what I'm running with, what would be the best ram I could purchase (I usually use New Egg) for gaming. I've never overclocked ram before and was looking to do it with this comp since it runs nice and cool. Given that I'm still running a p67 board I was trying to figure out what my limitations would be in overall frequency, since I've got an Ivy Bridge. Thanks in advance. PS I'm planning on spending up to $200-$250 range. Looking for something stable, that will up my performance in the most effective manner.

You should read this, in fact, everybody should read this as it explodes the myth of higher frequency ram improving performance: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6 That link was shared by another forum contributor last week. The fact is, the current generation of CPUs, whether AMD or Intel, isn't starved for data when memory is at 1333 mhz, much less at 2100 mhz and other high end ram frequencies. The only performance improvement incurred when buying that high speed ram is that of the bottom line of the company who made it.

Wow...I most certainly was not aware of that...it really makes that marginal of a difference?

BigEv1984 said:

Wow...I most certainly was not aware of that...it really makes that marginal of a difference?

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for most computing applications yes...

that being said there is more to it then saturating the bandwidth of the ram... the quicker your ram responds (we're talking nano seconds here) the quicker your applications start up and respond, lower timings help with this too.

Well that's certainly good to know, RAM was never my specialty so my knowledge in that area isn't that great. Would you suggest a RAM upgrade then?

you already have 8 gigs at 1600? for gaming that's all you need.

if you want to have some fun you can tighten the timings or overclock it a little pretty easily

make sure your command rate is set to 1T/N

What do you use your computer for?

With faster ram you will not see or feel a difference.

Alright well I appreciate the feedback. Looks like there isn't much for me to gain out of upgrading my RAM at this point.

trents said:

You should read this, in fact, everybody should read this as it explodes the myth of higher frequency ram improving performance: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6 That link was shared by another forum contributor last week. The fact is, the current generation of CPUs, whether AMD or Intel, isn't starved for data when memory is at 1333 mhz, much less at 2100 mhz and other high end ram frequencies. The only performance improvement incurred when buying that high speed ram is that of the bottom line of the company who made it.

Click to expand...

Good read with interesting data but like the author says in the last paragraph I also would like to see AMD. If I were SB I absolutely wouldn't waste my money on faster ram based on that though. I'd go for some 1333 with tight timings and call it a day.

I doubt that AMD can take advantage of the extra bandwidth afforded by the high speed ram as well as IB can. But I could be wrong. It would be nice to see some BD benchmarks. if IB has more cache then that could be the case.