What timings are good for Intel 13th gen?

[CV Dan]

I'm looking to buy 32gb of ddr5 RAM with 6400Mhz CL36, would this be good for a i7-13700k or should I go for better timings?

[YoungBlade]

DDR5-6400 CL36 is perfectly sufficient. It's not the fastest possible, but it's well within the range where giving more is offering minimal returns.

 

Basically, if you had a system with DDR5-6400 CL36 and another one with DDR5-7200 CL34 right next to each other, and tried both back and forth, you wouldn't be able to tell a difference without looking at an FPS counter. We're talking about a few percent difference maybe in some situations sometimes.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

imma just summon @RONOTHAN##

 

dunno if 6400c36 still comes with hynix a dies but you arent saving much over a 6400c32 kit like this so might aswell get a 6400c32 kit

 

theres also 6800c34 but i have no idea how consistent it is to get working out of the box with no additional tuning nor if theres any real performance benifit since this is xmp ram which have pretty lousy subtimings and freq compared to manually tuned rams

 

6400c32 should be consistent and require no tuning out of the box, feel free to push it to 7600-8800 later on if you wanna play around with ram tuning and hope you get a decent imc that isnt stuck at <8000 alongside a decent board

[CV Dan]

4 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

imma just summon @RONOTHAN##

 

dunno if 6400c36 still comes with hynix a dies but you arent saving much over a 6400c32 kit like this so might aswell get a 6400c32 kit

 

theres also 6800c34 but i have no idea how consistent it is to get working out of the box with no additional tuning nor if theres any real performance benifit since this is xmp ram which have pretty lousy subtimings and freq compared to manually tuned rams

 

6400c32 should be consistent and require no tuning out of the box, feel free to push it to 7600-8800 later on if you wanna play around with ram tuning and hope you get a decent imc that isnt stuck at <8000 alongside a decent board

Thank you for the advice, currently the ones I'm looking at and with my countries prices they're about 30 euros apart from one another

[CV Dan]

14 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

DDR5-6400 CL36 is perfectly sufficient. It's not the fastest possible, but it's well within the range where giving more is offering minimal returns.

 

Basically, if you had a system with DDR5-6400 CL36 and another one with DDR5-7200 CL34 right next to each other, and tried both back and forth, you wouldn't be able to tell a difference without looking at an FPS counter. We're talking about a few percent difference maybe in some situations sometimes.

That makes me relieved that either way the performance will be fine, would it be minimal performance difference in something like video editing?

[YoungBlade]

40 minutes ago, CV Dan said:

That makes me relieved that either way the performance will be fine, would it be minimal performance difference in something like video editing?

For video editing, it will also be a small difference. Most video editing programs don't rely heavily on memory timings nor memory bandwidth, in no small part because the GPU does a lot of the heavy lifting these days.

 

The sorts of productivity workloads that usually benefit from fast RAM are simulations, code compilation, and compression/decompression work, as the CPU needs to crunch a lot of numbers that are mostly stored in RAM. Even then, the workloads where buying expensive RAM pays off are quite niche. Usually, it would still make sense more to spend the extra money to get more RAM or to get a faster CPU.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

6 minutes ago, CV Dan said:

Thank you for the advice, currently the ones I'm looking at and with my countries prices they're about 30 euros apart from one another

what country btw?

and what site(s) do you buy from?

 

might be able to find something decently priced and with a good ic like hynix a die (10000+ capable) so you wont be ram limited if you decide to tune in the future and for future cpus that may need higher ram freq

 

high cl rams themselves arent a bad thing just because the primaries dont do shit for performance and you wont see the diff anyways but the ics they come with can be complete garbage hence why id avoid the high cl bins, dunno about high cl 6200+ ics but 6000 and below are probably garbage samsungs that wont clock past 7000 and early <5600 sticks can be micron 16gbit rev a that wont even clock past 5500

 

you wont see the performance diff now but when a future cpu requires higher freq and your rams cant hit that freq then youll definitely feel the performance diff maybe even to the point that you might have to swap rams depending on what freq is required

 

you can still get hynix a die in 5600c46 klevv or teamgroup sticks but im gonna assume you wont be tuning the rams right away hence why i wouldnt reccomend those since stock performance will be trash and theyre meant to be tuned immideatly

[CV Dan]

4 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

what country btw?

and what site(s) do you buy from?

 

might be able to find something decently priced and with a good ic like hynix a die (10000+ capable) so you wont be ram limited if you decide to tune in the future and for future cpus that may need higher ram freq

 

high cl rams themselves arent a bad thing just because the primaries dont do shit for performance and you wont see the diff anyways but the ics they come with can be complete garbage hence why id avoid the high cl bins, dunno about high cl 6200+ ics but 6000 and below are probably garbage samsungs that wont clock past 7000 and early <5600 sticks can be micron 16gbit rev a that wont even clock past 5500

 

you wont see the performance diff now but when a future cpu requires higher freq and your rams cant hit that freq then youll definitely feel the performance diff maybe even to the point that you might have to swap rams depending on what freq is required

 

you can still get hynix a die in 5600c46 klevv or teamgroup sticks but im gonna assume you wont be tuning the rams right away hence why i wouldnt reccomend those since stock performance will be trash and theyre meant to be tuned immideatly

I'm in Portugal, but best prices right now would be Amazon Spain 

[CV Dan]

8 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

For video editing, it will also be a small difference. Most video editing programs don't rely heavily on memory timings nor memory bandwidth, in no small part because the GPU does a lot of the heavy lifting these days.

 

The sorts of productivity workloads that usually benefit from fast RAM are simulations, code compilation, and compression/decompression work, as the CPU needs to crunch a lot of numbers that are mostly stored in RAM. Even then, the workloads where buying expensive RAM pays off are quite niche. Usually, it would still make more to spend the extra money to get more RAM or to get a faster CPU.

Thanks this really helped a lot to understand what I need

[Tetras]

31 minutes ago, CV Dan said:

That makes me relieved that either way the performance will be fine, would it be minimal performance difference in something like video editing?

You might be interested in this article.

Quote

Video editing and motion graphics performance is interesting compared to photography in that two of the applications – DaVinci Resolve and After Effects – appear less sensitive to memory than Premiere Pro or the Photography applications. DaVinci Resolve, for both Intel- and AMD-based systems, shows little correlation between performance and RAM speed and has a low spread of scores, just a few percent. After Effects shows some relatively consistent performance scaling with RAM speed but with a similarly small total difference of about 7% from worst to best.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/impact-of-ddr5-speed-on-content-creation-performance-2023-update/#Video_Editing_and_Motion_Graphics

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, CV Dan said:

should I go for better timings?

Yes. 6400 CL36 tends to be Micron based and has a bunch of issues from terrible timings to not even booting unless you have the right BIOS. Going for a 6000 CL30 or 6400 CL32 kit is going to be worth the little bit extra you'd spend on it. 

[CV Dan]

25 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yes. 6400 CL36 tends to be Micron based and has a bunch of issues from terrible timings to not even booting unless you have the right BIOS. Going for a 6000 CL30 or 6400 CL32 kit is going to be worth the little bit extra you'd spend on it. 

The 6400 CL36 I was looking at was a Corsair Vengeance RGB, would that be Micron?

[CV Dan]

1 hour ago, Tetras said:

You might be interested in this article.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/impact-of-ddr5-speed-on-content-creation-performance-2023-update/#Video_Editing_and_Motion_Graphics

Thanks that really helps

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, CV Dan said:

The 6400 CL36 I was looking at was a Corsair Vengeance RGB, would that be Micron?

Yes. For reference, there are only three companies that make the actual memory ICs that companies like Corsair, G.Skill, TeamGroup, Adata, etc. use: Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung. Micron's DDR5 is known to give some very weird issues and require specific BIOS optimization in order to work correctly compared to SK Hynix based kits, plus the SK Hynix based kits just perform better in general. 

 

You can identify them just based on the XMP speed, anything with flat timings (I.E. 6000 CL36-36-36) is usually going to be Samsung though can be Micron in some instances, anything with a low CAS latency (I.E. 6000 CL30-38-38 or 6400 CL32-39-39) is going to be Hynix, and anything with a ridiculously high tRCD (I.E. 6400 CL36-48-48) is going to be Micron. The SK Hynix kits aren't really priced at a premium compared to the Micron kits, they generally cost within $10 of each other, so you might as well get the Hynix based ones with more BIOS optimizations and better compatibility, as well as a bit of a performance increase. 

 

When quick looking at Amazon Spain like you said you were shopping at, a 6000 CL30 kit costs 20€ less than the 6400 CL36 kit and will offer better performance. 

https://amzn.eu/d/6sjPDzj

[CV Dan]

33 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yes. For reference, there are only three companies that make the actual memory ICs that companies like Corsair, G.Skill, TeamGroup, Adata, etc. use: Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung. Micron's DDR5 is known to give some very weird issues and require specific BIOS optimization in order to work correctly compared to SK Hynix based kits, plus the SK Hynix based kits just perform better in general. 

 

You can identify them just based on the XMP speed, anything with flat timings (I.E. 6000 CL36-36-36) is usually going to be Samsung though can be Micron in some instances, anything with a low CAS latency (I.E. 6000 CL30-38-38 or 6400 CL32-39-39) is going to be Hynix, and anything with a ridiculously high tRCD (I.E. 6400 CL36-48-48) is going to be Micron. The SK Hynix kits aren't really priced at a premium compared to the Micron kits, they generally cost within $10 of each other, so you might as well get the Hynix based ones with more BIOS optimizations and better compatibility, as well as a bit of a performance increase. 

 

When quick looking at Amazon Spain like you said you were shopping at, a 6000 CL30 kit costs 20€ less than the 6400 CL36 kit and will offer better performance. 

https://amzn.eu/d/6sjPDzj

 

I didn't know I could check like that thanks, I'll keep and eye for those speeds and will probably go with the one you linked

[CV Dan]

On 3/15/2024 at 5:09 PM, RONOTHAN## said:

Yes. For reference, there are only three companies that make the actual memory ICs that companies like Corsair, G.Skill, TeamGroup, Adata, etc. use: Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung. Micron's DDR5 is known to give some very weird issues and require specific BIOS optimization in order to work correctly compared to SK Hynix based kits, plus the SK Hynix based kits just perform better in general. 

 

You can identify them just based on the XMP speed, anything with flat timings (I.E. 6000 CL36-36-36) is usually going to be Samsung though can be Micron in some instances, anything with a low CAS latency (I.E. 6000 CL30-38-38 or 6400 CL32-39-39) is going to be Hynix, and anything with a ridiculously high tRCD (I.E. 6400 CL36-48-48) is going to be Micron. The SK Hynix kits aren't really priced at a premium compared to the Micron kits, they generally cost within $10 of each other, so you might as well get the Hynix based ones with more BIOS optimizations and better compatibility, as well as a bit of a performance increase. 

 

When quick looking at Amazon Spain like you said you were shopping at, a 6000 CL30 kit costs 20€ less than the 6400 CL36 kit and will offer better performance. 

https://amzn.eu/d/6sjPDzj

Just wanted to reply to this and say that you were a huge help, I ended up going for a G.Skill Trident Z5 kit that I found on sale in a Portuguese retailers website with 6800Mhz CL34 that I confirmed was SK Hynix kits, cause of that I got better timings and better speed at lower price, thank you a lot for the help and to everyone else who chimed in