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Would i benefit from faster RAM?

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fosk

Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Hey guys quick question here that hopefully someone with real knowledge and experience can quite easily give an accurate opinion on!

Do I need faster ram!? A few years back I had heard about Battlefield being a rare game that benefits from players having faster RAM which is something I never really had heard of in other games at all until again recently. This is an article suggesting DDR benefits many games greatly from high mhz ram http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page3.html

With the BF1 trailer hype and Origin sale a couple months back I decided to get into BF4 while it was 75% off!

So targeting 145fps for 144hz required to further OC the CPU (4770k @ 1.215 vcore) from 4.2ghz to 4.4 which i now run at 4.3 to keep temps down. I was dropping to 120fps every few seconds before that and even the extra 100mhz is making the world of difference. I have had my 970 max OCd but after a while I realized it didnt help or hurt the FPS at all with the low preset with AA turned on.

Right now my Ram is 16gb Corsair 1600mhz @ 10-10-10-27 which is quite good timings and amount but the link above said at least with DDR that 3000+mhz slack timing RAM would still be a lot more effective then 2133/2400 low timing RAM.

Now this build is 2.5 years old and everything is becoming cheaper and stronger so should i buy 16gb 2400mhz Corsair Platinum Ram @ 11-13-13-31 DDR3? Would i see much of a benefit overall? It should be said that I am planning to buy one of the stronger 1080s when the stock issues are resolved and probably once the BF1 Beta is done hopefully early September.

Right now the only thing keeping me from running 4.4-4.6ghz on my CPU is temps which I will hopefully be able to fix with some better air flow in my case.

The RAM upgrade is only 100 euros which i find great since my last RAM purchase was closer to 200.

Apart from BF4 and BF1 I really only play stuff like Quake Live / CSGO / Dota2 but i play a couple of the big TrippleA single player titles per year which i really enjoy them. I also plan and hopefully will be able to play Quake Champions at 145+ fps when its released in 1-2 years, will see since DOOM ran on Ultra at 120+ FPS mostly but would play online at low.

Thanks!
 
Mmm... 10-10-10-27 is quite loose for 1600MHz. Have you tried overclocking it by any chance?

What is your ram stock voltage? You can safely go to 1.65v (I personnaly go up to 1.7v for 24/7 use).

You might get up to 2000/2133MHz/Cl10. Maybe higher... Or not, but it's worth a try.
 
I was thinking the same thing for DDR3 1600. I ran mine at 8-8-8-24. If the OP can't get it to OC faster I would suggest working on those timings.
 
Mmm... 10-10-10-27 is quite loose for 1600MHz. Have you tried overclocking it by any chance?

What is your ram stock voltage? You can safely go to 1.65v (I personnaly go up to 1.7v for 24/7 use).

You might get up to 2000/2133MHz/Cl10. Maybe higher... Or not, but it's worth a try.


Ram is untouched and running at 1.5v in CPU-Z did this build right before higher mhz become affordable and standard :(

I thought RAM didnt OC very well in the past? That has changed?
 
Depends on the brand and the motherboard and the memory controller. Some AMD chips respond well to faster memory, for example. 1866 MHz from 1600 MHz would be a nice bump. If you're going to OC for more speed start with loose timings. Once you get it stable at its highest speed you can work on tightening the timing up.
 
Depends on the brand and the motherboard and the memory controller. Some AMD chips respond well to faster memory, for example. 1866 MHz from 1600 MHz would be a nice bump. If you're going to OC for more speed start with loose timings. Once you get it stable at its highest speed you can work on tightening the timing up.

What is the preferred method of testing RAM once upping the frequency as far as stability goes? I usually just run 3dmark these days to test my CPU/GPU rather then doing long Prime95 cycles, I managed to find this benchmark on a old OC forum thread.

http://www.maxxpi.net/pages/downloads/maxxmemsup2---preview.php

I am to guess the goal is to get the highest MB/s with the lowest Latency? Also is there anything I need to know or look at with RAM for instability or performance that the benchmarks won't show?

My brother with pretty much the same system almost entirely got his to 2400 mhz 11 - 13 - 13 - 34 or so quite easily so I guess I will slowly just up the frequency.

Thanks
 
Memtest would work, as will as Prime95. I forget which setting in Prime utilizes Ram more (large fft?). Faster frequency will provide the biggest gain, while tighter timings will help but it's more fine tuning than anything dramatic. If I missed anything or got something wrong someone will let us know (I hope) LOL
 
Personally I saw difference between DDR3-1600/1866 CL11 and 2133+ CL9 in some games but I can't see any difference between DDR4-2133 CL15 and anything 3000+. Maybe there are FPS differences ( I know there are ) but I just don't feel it in games.

I'm using AIDA64 memory+cache test to load ~95-99% RAM ( regardless if you have 8 or 64GB ). This test usually finds errors quick. AIDA64 is also great as memory benchmark. On the other hand it's not the best as CPU stability test.
If you test memory in Prime95 then as ED said, use blend.
 
Your memory and CPU is not holding you back in BF4 with FPS in the 120 range it is your video card. When I tested my GTX 970 at a resolution of 1024X768 ultra detail I have 200 FPS in BF4. My i5 6600k is only 15% faster in games compared to the i7 4770k,
 
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