Whats the focus on ram speed about lately?

[bob4933]

Noticing a change in the "Trendy" ram platforms lately. Everyone wants these super mega fast sticks of ram, and I am positive they have their applications; but they are certainly not for the average consumer.

For ddr3 it was always "1866 is all you need"... now its "get the fastest you can". Why? For most applications and usages, and I dare-say ALL applications for the home user/gamer, theres absolutely no point in anything faster than 2133mhz.

So... what happened? Not saying "dont get the fastest", Im asking "why is it a concern" now? The slowest of the slow ddr4 is still overkill for pretty much anything most users will be doing.

Not even talking about here, it's all over the place lately...

 

[ssjwizard]

Going back even further initially we were standing at 1600mhz is overkill for most applications, towards the end of the DDR3 era the CPUs actually had the ability to use faster RAM effectively. The newer generations of CPU can actually utilize faster memory, plus as with all things the bigger the numbers get the more the average person can trick themselves into it. Add onto that the fact that the price gap from mediocre memory to blistering memory has never been the low, so the trend exists. Most of the more experienced clockers on here don't recommend much over 2800mhz outside of benching or people with particular needs, but that's only a small slice of the overall community.

That's my .02 cents on it.

 

[Woomack]

Price of RAM is quite low and the difference between 2666 and 3200 or sometimes higher kits isn't so big. Many enthusiasts just want something better even if it won't help much in games. Also new platforms can easily use 3200+ memory.
Best performance to price ratio have ~3000-3200 kits but sometimes you can find something higher clocked in good price too.
You can also notice that most memory topics on the forums are about DDR4 now. DDR3 are not really interesting anymore as last good IC are not manufactured for like 2 years and each newer kits are only slower and worse for overclocking.

 

[bob4933]

Price of RAM is quite low and the difference between 2666 and 3200 or sometimes higher kits isn't so big. Many enthusiasts just want something better even if it won't help much in games. Also new platforms can easily use 3200+ memory.
Best performance to price ratio have ~3000-3200 kits but sometimes you can find something higher clocked in good price too.
You can also notice that most memory topics on the forums are about DDR4 now. DDR3 are not really interesting anymore as last good IC are not manufactured for like 2 years and each newer kits are only slower and worse for overclocking.

I mean, everyone here should know im the biggest advocate of "bang for your buck" around; i just cant see a visceral benefit from even spending any extra money on something that makes literally zero difference. Ram speed (once above 1866 anyway) has almost zero effect on anything other than hardcore editing and benchmarking.

And its trending away from enthusiasts as well, even on "normal" builds with i5s people cry about ram speed, I just cant understand why haha.

Oh well, just musings at this point, people will buy what they wish to buy.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Still isn't "get the fastest you can find", it's "buy 3000MHz CL14 or CL15 and call it a day".

 

[Janus67]

Still isn't "get the fastest you can find", it's "buy 3000MHz CL14 or CL15 and call it a day".

Bingo.

DDR3's 1600 or 1866 is DDR4's 3000-3200mhz CL14/CL15 sticks.

 

[bob4933]

Still isn't "get the fastest you can find", it's "buy 3000MHz CL14 or CL15 and call it a day".

No no, I get that. And no, Im not talking about THIS site. Theres a strong push for "if its not the fastest, its junk" basically. Im chalking it up to ignorance, but I figured I "might" be missing something. I don't think I am... Not a big deal either way, just musing.

 

[wingman99]

I feel the same way later this summer I'm think of upgrading and DDR4 3200Mz CL14 looks good to me even though I know it wont help at all for me, I just surf the net and play games. I don't know what compels me, I always want faster ram than OEM for the CPU. My budget skylake rig has DDR4 2133Mhz and I can't tell a difference. It's just like my CPU is overclocked and I have lowered the overclock to 3.2GHz and did not see a difference in Crysis 3 however I still leave my CPU overclocked.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

No no, I get that. And no, Im not talking about THIS site. Theres a strong push for "if its not the fastest, its junk" basically. Im chalking it up to ignorance, but I figured I "might" be missing something. I don't think I am... Not a big deal either way, just musing.

Hasn't the internet, in general since it went mainstream, always been about getting the fastest or it's crap?

 

[magellan]

In Fallout 4 RAM speeds of 2400 Mhz have show clearly increased average and minimum FPS over RAM @ 2133 MHz:

http://wccftech.com/fallout-4-performance-heavily-influenced-by-ram-speed-according-to-report/

This article also shows other games that have performance influenced by RAM speed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/3w7kly

Not much of a difference, but a clear difference.

 

[wingman99]

I wonder How Fallout 4 does with DDR4 2133MHz vs DDR4 3200MHz?

 

[bob4933]

In Fallout 4 RAM speeds of 2400 Mhz have show clearly increased average and minimum FPS over RAM @ 2133 MHz:

http://wccftech.com/fallout-4-performance-heavily-influenced-by-ram-speed-according-to-report/

This article also shows other games that have performance influenced by RAM speed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/3w7kly

Not much of a difference, but a clear difference.

OK this makes a ton of sense then, especially with the relatively recent "push" (Sorry atm, but for the past couple years, ram was just "ram", now its "crucial" to get all the speed you can).

No one spoke directly of positive gains to be had, but 5 fps for THAT, I can definitely see the reasons now.

 

[wingman99]

I don't know if I believe that review, I can run a bench test over and over and have that margin of error. That is only one site that says system memory helps a dedicated GPU.

 

[magellan]

I don't know if I believe that review, I can run a bench test over and over and have that margin of error. That is only one site that says system memory helps a dedicated GPU.

More than one review from reputable testing sites have shown Fallout 4 benefits from faster RAM with a dedicated GPU.

 

[wingman99]

It was the same test they are referring to and it was DDR3 memory, I don't believe the memory had anything to do with it.

 

[Kenrou]

Time to show my n00bness : how does the system ram differ from vram ? both makes you load stuff faster then HDD/SSD but you can clearly see max fps gains if you overclock vram. Why would regular ram do/not do the same ? a computer is a collection of different parts put together to form a whole, every little part helps right ? every little part makes the other parts a tiny bit faster ?

In the case of Fallout 4 might it be just bad programming ?

 

[Woomack]

There are different connections/channels and VRAM is faster and is really close to GPU so there are no additional delays in transfering/accessing data. Hard to explain it in short way but if you have time then should be some articles in the web.
Also difference in performance because of VRAM depends from many things. Like if you have 128bit memory gfx card and you overclock memory then you will see clearly performance gain. If you make the same on 512bit card then you will barely see any difference as memory bandwidth is already really high.
RAM works at the same bus bandwidth but there are some differences because of ranks ( not so big difference ). However in most cases performance gain depends from used application - if it uses a lot of data which is transfered through RAM. In new computers, processor's cache is so large and fast that RAM doesn't have to be really fast to deliver high performance. You can improve it but to see real difference ( at least in benchmarks ) you have to overclock additional components ( memory controller, cache clock etc ).
So if game is loading a lot of data then you may see performance differences because of RAM. However we don't have many games that are using a lot of RAM.

Regarding RAM nowadays, I see that gamers are more often looking for ~2800-3200 kits because of their performance/price ratio. In general there are not many overclockers like OCF members who are going for higher series. Even overclockers are looking for cheaper series on good IC like recently released Trident Z 3000/3200. Still high end but much cheaper than 3600+ kits.
On the other hand most of gamers don't know and don't care what is inside memory kits. They just see that manufacturers are releasing new "much better" series and they believe it will run great regardless what is inside. Look at graphics cards manufacturers who try to tell us that all their graphics cards are designed for gaming, regardless if it's GF720 or GTX980Ti. Or AMD who rebranded many from 3 graphics card series in a row with not big changes ... but they still tell you it's great for all new games. All new games for 3 years+ on the same GPU ?

 

[magellan]

It was the same test they are referring to and it was DDR3 memory, I don't believe the memory had anything to do with it.

Here's another site that found the same relationship between faster memory and better perf. in Fallout 4:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-the-best-pc-hardware-for-fallout-4-4023

"Check out the sidebar concerning the impact of faster RAM: if you're running 1333MHz or 1666MHz DDR3, swapping that for 2400MHz RAM can make a substantial difference and definitely helps with your lowest frame-rates. We even saw substantial gains in CPU-bound areas with a Core i5 4690K."

Techspot also did their own independent test.

 

[t1nm4n]

It's all about the money that can be generated by the manufacturers and the bragging right that they can say they have the fastest memory. I was in the vast majority of consumers long ago that thought with his... "E-peen" and bought the fastest I could afford cause that's how I thought it worked. I've since (sort-of) learned that bigger isn't always better, faster here doesn't mean faster there.

This is also an Intel AMD ?, as far as DDR3. I look forward to seeing how AMD will utilize DDR4 with its new platform... if we ever see it (for another thread out there already). But each platform handles Ram differently, and each prefer different speeds for mainstream machines. I had a 4 stick set of 2133 in this machine for awhile thinking it was the bee-knees, then after reading and being told by members here that it was a waste, I realized I bought into the bigger better faster hype, I got a 2 stick of slower ram with tighter timings and it was like a weight had been lifted from this machine, ever performance test I ran actually showed it doing better (same size kit).

Anyways that was my $.25 worth of thought on the subject.

 

[wingman99]

Here's another site that found the same relationship between faster memory and better perf. in Fallout 4:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-the-best-pc-hardware-for-fallout-4-4023

"Check out the sidebar concerning the impact of faster RAM: if you're running 1333MHz or 1666MHz DDR3, swapping that for 2400MHz RAM can make a substantial difference and definitely helps with your lowest frame-rates. We even saw substantial gains in CPU-bound areas with a Core i5 4690K."

Techspot also did their own independent test.

Like I said the one test was all from Digital Foundry.