Archaic Ram, a problem in modern systems?

[jinamgo]

So i just booted up speccy (awesome program by the way) for the umpteenth time, only to notice something that I've not noticed before,

 

My 8gb of ram, which i've been using for years is only 666MHz. I've never bothered to upgrade this as I've never really had ram related problems. Linus always speaks out about how low speed ram is sufficient for gaming, but i didn't realize you can get away with such low speeds. 
 

Has anybody else just not bothered to upgrade ram as their Archaic ram is sufficient for their light use case scenarios?

 

System is listed in the attachment

 

Thanks

Jinamgo

[Paul_VB]

So i just booted up speccy (awesome program by the way) for the umpteenth time, only to notice something that I've not noticed before,

 

My 8gb of ram, which i've been using for years is only 666MHz. I've never bothered to upgrade this as I've never really had ram related problems. Linus always speaks out about how low speed ram is sufficient for gaming, but i didn't realize you can get away with such low speeds. 

 

Has anybody else just not bothered to upgrade ram as their Archaic ram is sufficient for their light use case scenarios?

 

System is listed in the attachment

 

Thanks

Jinamgo

666MHz is the base clock for 1333 effective memory. remmember what DDR3 stands for (Double data rate)

[What's a GPU?]

Try benchmarking your system and then compare it to others with the same CPU and GPU setup.

Edited December 17, 2014 by What's a GPU?

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

 

you have to double the rate, you are using 1333mhz ram!

[ForsakenLive]

You are actually running 1333MHz, Speccy shows the core clock speed of your ram, but you have to remember it's DDR, Double Data Rate; meaning it's double (2 clocks running simultaneously)

[jinamgo]

Ahh, thanks for clearing that up. I guess i really don't have to upgrade my ram for ages yet then!

[typographie]

I do remember one benchmark where RAM speed did make a difference:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-latency-gaming,3409-4.html

 

Granted that's quite possibly the only game where it has ever made a difference, it's from nearly three years ago, the differences are all well over 100 FPS in that test, and the memory scaling almost vanishes when they went to Ultra detail.

[FruitBasketSilex]

Cough ram of the devil cough

[Dabombinable]

So i just booted up speccy (awesome program by the way) for the umpteenth time, only to notice something that I've not noticed before,

 

My 8gb of ram, which i've been using for years is only 666MHz. I've never bothered to upgrade this as I've never really had ram related problems. Linus always speaks out about how low speed ram is sufficient for gaming, but i didn't realize you can get away with such low speeds. 

 

Has anybody else just not bothered to upgrade ram as their Archaic ram is sufficient for their light use case scenarios?

 

System is listed in the attachment

 

Thanks

Jinamgo

I was running my computer's RAM at 667MHz (DDR2-various manufacturers) for quite a while, even though it was rated at 800MHz. It took having to bump up the FSB speed from 333MHz to 400MHz to be able to actually get the full speed. Though I did notice that Windows 7 (on my old laptop anyway) runs extremely slow on anything less than 667. It came with 2x 1GB 447MHz modules (that was the actual speed-I couldn't believe it either as my desktops mobo says anything less than 667MHz is out of spec and may prevent the system from booting), and with no CPU load windows was almost impossible to use (NVS 110M 256MB graphics so that wasn't the issue)