Cut-off point for DDR3 RAM speed? Is 2666MHz worthwhile?

[GuruMeditationError]

Is DDR3 2666MHz RAM worthwhile, or is there a cut-off point or point of diminished returns?

 

I need low profile RAM but can't find any to match the speed of my DDR3 2666MHz sticks so I'm planning on using a heat-gun to remove the proprietary heat spreaders.

Is this worth doing? Or should I switch to DDR3 2400MHZ low profile RAM?

I've read that over a certain speed there's no difference in performance; is that true?

What should I do?  

[Mateyyy]

2666MHz XMP? Are you sure that's not DDR4?

High-end DDR3 kits topped out at 2133/2400MHz.

[GuruMeditationError]

10 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

2666MHz XMP? Are you sure that's not DDR4?

High-end DDR3 kits topped out at 2133/2400MHz.

It's definitely DDR3. The fastest DDR3 kit I've seen advertised is 3000MHz  

[Mateyyy]

3 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

It's definitely DDR3. The fastest DDR3 kit I've seen advertised is 3000MHz  

Yeah, I'm dumb.

I doubt you'll see any performance loss by dropping to 2400MHz on DDR3. The point of diminishing returns on that generation was somewhere around 1866 and 2133MHz. I think even LTT did a video on this back in the day.

[GuruMeditationError]

1 minute ago, Mateyyy said:

Yeah, I'm dumb.

I doubt you'll see any performance loss by dropping to 2400MHz on DDR3. The point of diminishing returns on that generation was somewhere around 1866 and 2133MHz. I think even LTT did a video on this back in the day.

Yeah, I think I might have found that one? I'm going to take a look at it now. Just not sure because for some time people didn't think RAM speed made a difference at all, so looking for benchmarks.

[Mateyyy]

7 minutes ago, GuruMeditationError said:

Yeah, I think I might have found that one? I'm going to take a look at it now. Just not sure because for some time people didn't think RAM speed made a difference at all, so looking for benchmarks.

It didn't really make a difference even on DDR4 up until and Zen and Coffee Lake showed up, so it's fairly recently become a lot more important than it used to be for day-to-day, or rather non-specialised workloads that actually needed a lot of memory bandwidth.

[GuruMeditationError]

32 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

It didn't really make a difference even on DDR4 up until and Zen and Coffee Lake showed up, so it's fairly recently become a lot more important than it used to be for day-to-day workloads.

I guess, also I hear it makes less of a difference as you move up from 1080p to 1440p which I'm in the process of doing, but I think I'm just going to stick with what I have. I think the extra speed should make a little difference at least.

I'm just a bit reluctant to strip the heatsinks off of such nice looking RAM. If RAM speed with DDR3 definitively didn't matter at all, then I might have second thoughts, but to be honest I think it makes more of a difference than people in the "ddr3 era" so to speak actually realised at the time? It's hard to find good benchmarks for DDR3 now that everything's DDR4, but what I have found points towards it making at least some difference?

 

Edit: Some benchmarks...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X57eUy96JW0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqpxDn3NW-g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfTQ7OOv5oM

[Beerzerker]

It makes a big difference with Intel DDR3 setups, for AMD it's not as much of a difference since AMD DDR3 setups typically top out around the 2400 mark, depending on the exact hardware in use.
I have a set of 2666 and 2800 sticks here, they work well but I don't use them much for what I do with my DDR3 stuff.

 

The obvious tradeoff is in timings vs speed achieved with them, however more RAM speed is good if you can get it.
Intel setups prefer speed over timings, AMD prefers tighter timings vs speed but if you can get both it's nothing but win with either one.

 

Super PI is a good bench to see how well the sticks will do based on timings vs speed, some games depend on it to show improvement.... Overall it's a matter of just trying different benchmarks, tweaking when playing your games and so on to see these differences.

 

[GuruMeditationError]

19 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

It makes a big difference with Intel DDR3 setups, for AMD it's not as much of a difference since AMD DDR3 setups typically top out around the 2400 mark, depending on the exact hardware in use.
I have a set of 2666 and 2800 sticks here, they work well but I don't use them much for what I do with my DDR3 stuff.

 

The obvious tradeoff is in timings vs speed achieved with them, however more RAM speed is good if you can get it.
Intel setups prefer speed over timings, AMD prefers tighter timings vs speed but if you can get both it's nothing but win with either one.

 

Super PI is a good bench to see how well the sticks will do based on timings vs speed, some games depend on it to show improvement.... Overall it's a matter of just trying different benchmarks, tweaking when playing your games and so on to see these differences.

 

Thanks so much for responding, it's very appreciated.

The 2666MHz sticks I have are CAS11 12-13-13-35-T2 at 1.65 volts, so they're pretty good.

On one hand I don't want to move to 2400MHz CAS11, but on the other hand I'm really reluctant to strip the heatsinks off of these because they just look so nice. 

Edit: I just can't seem to find benchmarks comparing DDR3 2400MHz to DDR3 2666MHz, I'm just assuming they will make a difference and that 2400MHz isn't a cut off point / point of diminishing returns.

Also, yes, It's for use with a 4790k

[Beerzerker]

You can go to the bot (HWbot) and get alot of benchmarks for testing.
I'll PM you the link to all that.