Haswell Real World Performance: DDR3-1600 is Not Enough

[E.Beadle]

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/march/haswellrealworld
 

The prevailing wisdom in the enthusiast community has been, for generations, that DDR3-1600 is the sweet spot and that faster memory offers at best extremely limited performance improvement and that at worst, it’s snake oil. There’s an element of truth to that; AMD’s Bulldozer architecture and its derivatives see arguably minimal benefit from faster memory, and Ivy Bridge and its predecessors actually were just fine at DDR3-1600. So the idea that the paradigm might have shifted is tough to swallow because it goes against wisdom that’s been ingrained for years, a veritable lifetime in our industry.

Except that it has. DDR3-1600 is quite simply no longer enough for modern chips outside of Ivy Bridge-E and Vishera. That Kaveri benefits from faster memory (at least on the GPU side) is a foregone conclusion that was confirmed by our testing. AnandTech already exhaustively detailed performance scaling with different memory speeds on Haswell, and I’ve studied the effect of memory speed on Battlefield 4’s performance. Between our work and AnandTech’s extremely thorough research, you’d think there would finally be a pervasive understanding of the benefit of faster memory on Haswell, but that hasn’t been the case.

Link: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/march/haswellrealworld

What are your thoughts?

[LOLPhilips]

Before anything.. I'd quote that text if I were you.

 

And on the article itself.. Seems I stand corrected but I still wouldn't bother myself with buying to0 expensive memory, got something clockable.

[CartertheCOCguy]

wow, i found this interesting, i might go with 1866 or 2133 now lol

[Cryptonite]

 

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/march/haswellrealworld

 

The prevailing wisdom in the enthusiast community has been, for generations, that DDR3-1600 is the sweet spot and that faster memory offers at best extremely limited performance improvement and that at worst, it’s snake oil. There’s an element of truth to that; AMD’s Bulldozer architecture and its derivatives see arguably minimal benefit from faster memory, and Ivy Bridge and its predecessors actually were just fine at DDR3-1600. So the idea that the paradigm might have shifted is tough to swallow because it goes against wisdom that’s been ingrained for years, a veritable lifetime in our industry.

Except that it has. DDR3-1600 is quite simply no longer enough for modern chips outside of Ivy Bridge-E and Vishera. That Kaveri benefits from faster memory (at least on the GPU side) is a foregone conclusion that was confirmed by our testing. AnandTech already exhaustively detailed performance scaling with different memory speeds on Haswell, and I’ve studied the effect of memory speed on Battlefield 4’s performance. Between our work and AnandTech’s extremely thorough research, you’d think there would finally be a pervasive understanding of the benefit of faster memory on Haswell, but that hasn’t been the case.

Link: http://www.corsair.com/en-us/blog/2014/march/haswellrealworld

What are your thoughts?

 

that if it needs testing to prove, people don't need it yet.

[totjup5]

I have 1866 mhz memory and I don't notice a difference...

[The_Strict_Nein]

Hmm, Corsair wants you to buy their more expensive 1866MHz+ RAM kits, I wonder why?

In all seriousness, I'm going 1866 when I build my PC. Touch more future-resistant

[JLCitadel]

Hmm, Corsair wants you to buy their more expensive 1866MHz+ RAM kits, I wonder why?

In all seriousness, I'm going 1866 when I build my PC. Touch more future-resistant

 

I don't see what the point in them making this article is. It's almost retarded in my opinion.

 

People who can afford to stretch for the price gap from 1600->1866 take it, the people who go with 1600 won't care about the 2 frames difference because they can't afford to care. If it doesn't fit their budget, IT DOESN'T FIT THEIR BUDGET, and if it does, they'll take it. There's much better places to put 30-40$ more such as a better PSU.

[mvitkun]

Before anything.. I'd quote that text if I were you.

 

And on the article itself.. Unless you build your pc just for benchmarks (memory demanding that is) I still don't see a point to faster memory. As none of those graphs will have anything to do with real world performance, on anything but benchies.

you do realize that they tested with games and real world applications in addition to the synthetic benchmarks, right?

[skullbringer]

paying 50 % more for 5 % more performance. seems reasonable!

[LOLPhilips]

you do realize that they tested with games and real world applications in addition to the synthetic benchmarks, right?

 

Actually I didn't =P But I can't be bothered by starcraft And I'm not running 7zip the entirety of the day so..

 

Don't really need to run my memory at 2400mhz in my own case..

Since its quad channel it runs above 40gb/s bandwith anyway

[Bonn]

Does anyone care about timings anymore?

[Scheer]

Haven't there been a flood of news posts over the last year saying the exact opposite...?

 

Its always hard to trust something someone says when they have something to gain out of it.

[ForsakenLive]

the prices are too high for us bothering with high speed RAM, and still you can get some Adata $79.90 1600mhz 2x4gb kit and OC it like crazy.

[ShiverMePenguins]

Haven't there been a flood of news posts over the last year saying the exact opposite...?

 

Its always hard to trust something someone says when they have something to gain out of it.

there have been benchmarks from different groups showing bf4 gets better fps depending on your memory clocks. if i go from 1333 to use the normal clocks that i have (1866) my fps jumps up by like 7-8 fps.

[MasterJV]

Anandtech had a interesting article similar to this. Basically it says that 1886 CL9 is the new sweet spot. It can be found for the same price or a dollar or two more than 1600 mhz ram. It will only give you a small performance boost, so don't expect anything spectacular.

[LimpCurve]

It's funny how some people still think that there's a price difference from DDR3 1600 to 1866. If you search it up enough, you'll see that prices don't start to go up until after DDR3 2400. 

[Praxis727]

There have been many articles on this over the past year.  Basically  for the amount of performance you get you are throwing your money away.  The same Lower clock ram standard applies.  Unless you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money to get a noticeable but uneeded amount of performance boost.

 

@piplupgao  Might just be a better clock at 1866 with the latency.

[MegaDave91]

That's funny, because I was thinking of picking up a 16GB kit of gold Adata 2400MHz just last week but thought, "Naw, 1600 is fine for me". I might have to rethink that.

[minimalist]

So what you're saying is that I should go with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233399   instead of this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233388

[EpicGeekonFire]

Just OC to 1866

[WereCat]

Hmm, looks like I may OC my RAM after all.

1.45V CL9 1600MHz on stock... can I expect 1866MHz without increasing CL?

[MagnetSh0CK]

I bought my 2400mhz when ram prices spiked, and they were as much as some 1600mhz. I did it because ddr4 is 2133 stock and I do a lot of work besides gaming.

[JAKEBAB]

i have 1866 and its fine i wont be upgrading until ddr4 when there is real speed increase and density im not going to buy new ram for an old platform.

[E.Beadle]

Before anything.. I'd quote that text if I were you.

 

And on the article itself.. Seems I stand corrected but I still wouldn't bother myself with buying to0 expensive memory, got something clockable.

The link is the source. 

--------------------------------------------------------

Much like some other users, I'm not a gamer, Most of my work is done reading, writing, transfering data...

On average I probably am shifting data to a thumdrive, or an external drive every other day. 

Everday I am usually editing a photo. 

I may game on the PC around 10 to 11 hours I'f im home and bored. 

Other than that, Photoshop, indesign or its computer repair, disk diagnosis, or disk recovery im doing. 

Hence why i found this interesting. 

My personal take, Price per performance ...DDR4 is dangerously close to being released. Its a poor time to do a build. by this time next year. DDR3 will be mainly used/needed for pc repairs or small time upgrades.  DDR2 is damn near faded out except in laptops. Its rare I get a DDR2 desktop....laptop all the time and even then.. rare. 

[lhikary]

we are really close to ddr4 cpu's
i wouldn't bother really if i were you