Ram speed, how does it work?

[Shiki]

What is the point in getting 2400 ram instead of say 1600 ram. What advantages do i gain with the giant price leap?

Would there be an advantage to get 2800 ram? Just a few questions, 2400 ram is my max affordability for ram.

 

[Janus67]

Outside of benchmarks you likely won't notice the difference. There is increased bandwidth and speed from the memory, that is the difference. Pretty much DDR3-1600 is the sweet spot for price/performance.

 

[trents]

Anything over 1333 mhz will net you very little performance improvement in all but a few applications. The most significant advantage of high frequency ram is that when it is run at lower frequencies the timings can generally be tightened down and that will have more impact on performance than a high frequency bandwidth. Current CPUs just cannot take good advantage of high frequency ram because they are not starved for bandwidth.

 

[caddi daddi]

what about ram timing? my ram runs at 9-9-9-24 or some such.
i read around about loosening and tightening the timings.
can i run say, 8-8-8-24 or some such? and what does it do for me?

 

[Knufire]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/

 

[caddi daddi]

now that's a link worth reading, i can set my ram speeds down.
i MAY be able to set my ram speeds higher but don't expect much.
I thought i had to buy ddr3-1333 but i can set my ddr3-1600 to ddr3-1333.

thank you very much.

 

[trents]

Yes, you an run your 1600 ram at 1333 or any lower frequency.