RAM Conundrum

[Cactusbat]

Budget (including currency): NA $

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: General gaming plus some possible CAD work depending on career movements

Current System: Ryzen 2700X, ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate, 16GB G.SKILL Ripjaws 3200mhz CAS14 memory, EVGA GTX 1070 Black Edition*, 250GB PNY SSD boot drive*, Seagate 3TB HDD*

For the last couple months I've been eyeballing a 32GB kit from G.Skill that has the same specs as the stuff I'm currently running, but it has a $194.99 price tag. Today I got a notice from Newegg that a 32GB 3200mhz kit from G.Skill had dropped to 109.99 and I got super excited, only to be confused when I saw it was a similar kit with timings of 16-18-18-38 and now I find myself torn because of lack of knowledge. I know enough to be able to pick parts to make a well functioning computer, but when it comes to finer details I'm at a loss, such as memory timings.

What kind of real performance difference would I see between 2 sets of memory with the same clock speeds, but timings of 14-14-14-34 vs 16-18-18-38? G.Skill CAS16 kit and G.Skill CAS14 kit for anyone curious or interested. Would the difference be worth $90??

*On the Upgrade Soon list

 

[Lord Nicoll]

6 minutes ago, Cactusbat said:

Budget (including currency): NA $

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: General gaming plus some possible CAD work depending on career movements

Current System: Ryzen 2700X, ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate, 16GB G.SKILL Ripjaws 3200mhz CAS14 memory, EVGA GTX 1070 Black Edition*, 250GB PNY SSD boot drive*, Seagate 3TB HDD*

For the last couple months I've been eyeballing a 32GB kit from G.Skill that has the same specs as the stuff I'm currently running, but it has a $194.99 price tag. Today I got a notice from Newegg that a 32GB 3200mhz kit from G.Skill had dropped to 109.99 and I got super excited, only to be confused when I saw it was a similar kit with timings of 16-18-18-38 and now I find myself torn because of lack of knowledge. I know enough to be able to pick parts to make a well functioning computer, but when it comes to finer details I'm at a loss, such as memory timings.

What kind of real performance difference would I see between 2 sets of memory with the same clock speeds, but timings of 14-14-14-34 vs 16-18-18-38? G.Skill CAS16 kit and G.Skill CAS14 kit for anyone curious or interested. Would the difference be worth $90??

*On the Upgrade Soon list

 

3200MHz CL16-18-18-38 is pretty bad, I have 4000MHz RAM that does 18-18-18-38 XMP. CL14-14-14-34 is what I'd expect from reasonable 3200MHz but this is coming from someone exposed to very nice RAM kits so, what I say maybe it a bit biased towards the highend, but the RAM is worth what it's sold for, that is half as good as the other kit. You could probably overclock the cheap memory with a little more voltage but that's not a guarantee and would require extensive testing. 

[Jurrunio]

3200 is just slow to begin with, if you're part of the XMP gang you shouldnt get either kit. Are you one of them?

[Cactusbat]

@Jurrunio I had gone with 2400mhz when I originally built the system in Dec of 18 and it wasn't long after that I started reading about real, noticeable improvements going from 2400 to 3200.  It also seemed to be a sweet spot between speed and cost when coupled with Ryzens. I have no reason to increase the clock speed nowadays, but I'm facing a possible reason to increase the amount of memory, hence why I'm asking about the real performance difference between the two memory timings.  My rigs primarily used for gaming and some work stuff, which is looking to be more CAD level work in my future, so I'm looking at upgrading where needed. If the difference isn't going to be noticeable without computer aid/benchmarking, that's all I need to know.

No idea what you're referring to with "the XMP gang", so.. no? If I'm only going to get grief on my hardware choices and no actual answers to my question, I suppose this isn't much of a help forum and I should go elsewhere eh?  Stay classy.

[Jurrunio]

10 minutes ago, Cactusbat said:

 It also seemed to be a sweet spot between speed and cost when coupled with Ryzens.

for Zen+ that is, newer Ryzen CPUs scale to higher frequencies and are actually stable. For Zen 2 it's about 3600MHz, Zen 3 at about 3800-4000MHz. I think you should keep that in mind when AM4's strong suit is the wide range of CPU upgrades you can make on the same board.

 

1 hour ago, Cactusbat said:

 I have no reason to increase the clock speed nowadays, but I'm facing a possible reason to increase the amount of memory, hence why I'm asking about the real performance difference between the two memory timings.

If you just run XMP, then C14 will be irrelevantly better (i.e. visible but insignificant in a few benchmarks, nothing otherwise). If you go manual tuning (what I mean of "not in the XMP gang"), then 3200C14 will provide way greater tuning capability (Samsung B-die after all and do something say, 3466C12) to beat 3200C16's performance (since they tend to have limited capability, so let's say 3466C16 tops) by finally, a meaningful margin at least in some workloads (benchmarks). Practically speaking? 3200C16 make more sense at this price, overclocking hard isnt so practical these days.

 

If you do want more performance (at least after you get a newer CPU, Zen+ cant reasonably run this) with more memory frequency, then 3600C18 and C16 will be the best bet. If I recall correctly they are in $120 to $130 range (no LEDs of course), so right between 3200C16 and 3200C14, while offering better XMP performance and between the two in tuning potential.

 

Maybe by "3200 is just slow" makes me sound rude, but all I want to say is that 3200 is no longer the sweet deal speed today. Was, not is.

[Cactusbat]

@Jurrunio Thank you very much.