real world difference between 2133mhz and 3000mhz DDR4?

[buttmademewiser]

So I''m about to build a new rig in march and I was wondering whether to get 16 gigs of Corsairs DDR4 2133Mhz CL13 13-15-15-28  or 3000Mhz CL15  15-17-17-35  ram. The thing that I'm thinking that whether it's too much harder to get the 3000mhz sticks to run stable than 2133mhz and if the benefit of having higher mem clocks is better than having better timing curve. Rig specs are i7 6700k, gtx 980, 500gb ssd and 2tb hdd, haven't decided on a motherboard (although probably rog board or something that matches with MSi's 980 gaming cooler color scheme) and an ax760i. This rig is for gaming and daily Photoshopping and photo editing in general.

[Paralectic]

For gaming, no difference.

[Juanse]

Get the easyest to find if you're willing to upgrade in the future, if not, go for the 3000mhz

[buttmademewiser]

1 minute ago, Paralectic said:

For gaming, no difference.

I also do a lot of photo editing, but probably doesn't effect that?

[SeanAngelo]

3 minutes ago, buttmademewiser said:

So I''m about to build a new rig in march and I was wondering whether to get 16 gigs of Corsairs DDR4 2133Mhz CL13 13-15-15-28  or 3000Mhz CL15  15-17-17-35  ram. The thing that I'm thinking that whether it's too much harder to get the 3000mhz sticks to run stable than 2133mhz and if the benefit of having higher mem clocks is better than having better timing curve. The rig specs are i7 6700k, gtx 980, 500gb ssd and 2tb hdd, haven't decided on a motherboard (although probably rog board or something that matches with MSi's 980 gaming cooler color scheme) and an ax760i.

no difference.

[JebKerman]

higher frequency memory is only really beneficial for content creation, or if the CPU is the bottleneck in the system when gaming (which being a 6700K, is not going to be a common occurrence).

[Caine]

from what i've read, there is not much difference in gaming performance, HOWEVER, I have seen cases in which a higher frequency ram kit improved performance. That being said, if you know how to overclock your ram and set xmp profiles and you can afford the higher freq. ram, i would buy it

[Sakkura]

Faster memory helps in many CPU-intensive games, but going all the way up to 3000 is very rarely going to be worth it. Try to find an affordable kit at 2400-2666 with decent timings.

[TheGhzGuy]

2 minutes ago, buttmademewiser said:

So I''m about to build a new rig in march and I was wondering whether to get 16 gigs of Corsairs DDR4 2133Mhz CL13 13-15-15-28  or 3000Mhz CL15  15-17-17-35  ram. The thing that I'm thinking that whether it's too much harder to get the 3000mhz sticks to run stable than 2133mhz and if the benefit of having higher mem clocks is better than having better timing curve. The rig specs are i7 6700k, gtx 980, 500gb ssd and 2tb hdd, haven't decided on a motherboard (although probably rog board or something that matches with MSi's 980 gaming cooler color scheme) and an ax760i.

There was a video showing, at most, a 10FPS difference in GTA 5. Though that generally averages between 5-10 FPS. However this will vary from game to game. This is because GTA 5 loves the CPU. Low CPU use games won't see a difference.

[vanished]

Generally speaking there's no difference.  Under certain conditions, poor timings can lower performance, and if you are using an iGPU faster memory can help, but for any good build you don't need to worry

[Imakuni]

6 minutes ago, buttmademewiser said:

So I''m about to build a new rig in march and I was wondering whether to get 16 gigs of Corsairs DDR4 2133Mhz CL13 13-15-15-28  or 3000Mhz CL15  15-17-17-35  ram. The thing that I'm thinking that whether it's too much harder to get the 3000mhz sticks to run stable than 2133mhz and if the benefit of having higher mem clocks is better than having better timing curve. The rig specs are i7 6700k, gtx 980, 500gb ssd and 2tb hdd, haven't decided on a motherboard (although probably rog board or something that matches with MSi's 980 gaming cooler color scheme) and an ax760i.

Get faster RAM if:

1. If you intend to use the iGPU. Doesn't look like it, though.....
2. The price is nearly the same / you like the aesthetics of the faster kit.
3. If you intend to do RAM intensive tasks, such as setting up a RAM disk or doing primality testing. There are many math projects in Boinc that could use your help; and you could use them to snag yourself a badge for the LTT forum.

[Sakkura]

To all the people saying it makes no difference, please check this article. It does make a difference, even with a Core i3.

[vanished]

Just now, Sakkura said:

To all the people saying it makes no difference, please check this article. It does make a difference, even with a Core i3.

I believe MageTank also did a great explanation of this... where was that post again?

[Sakkura]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

I believe MageTank also did a great explanation of this... where was that post again?

 

Here you go.

 

 

[Deli]

1 hour ago, buttmademewiser said:

I also do a lot of photo editing, but probably doesn't effect that?

Doesn't matter at all. Unless you need to batch convert 2000 photo in one go.

[MageTank]

Memory speed does impact gaming performance in situations with high CPU overhead. The difference varies depending on your hardware configuration (stronger GPU's like even faster memory, SLI/Crossfire benefits even more from faster memory than single cards, etc). My personal tests with a G4400 and a GTX 770 showed a difference of 10% in my minimum FPS, which is pretty good considering its a $46 kit that i overclocked for free performance.

 

I had a friend of mine with a 4790k and 3 GTX 780's run the same test, with 1600mhz DDR3 and 2400mhz DDR3, and he found the difference to be even greater, with his minimum framerates improving by a massive 20% in some titles. The two of us are currently working on a comprehensive guide to post on multiple forums, with an internal guide for memory overclocking, including which specific timings give the most bandwidth, and their impact gaming in general. Once I finish helping with that, I'll try to get the information on this forum, along with a video to explain our process and how to replicate it yourselves.

 

That being said, the law of diminishing returns applies here. In my personal tests, going beyond 2800mhz didn't yield any extra performance on my 3000mhz and 3200mhz runs. 2800mhz seems to be the sweet spot for single GPU configurations. My friend noticed exactly the same thing with DDR3 at 2400mhz, in a single GPU configuration. HOWEVER, he noticed an improvement going to 2666mhz on his DDR3 kit (He couldn't get his kit beyond 2666mhz, so we can't tell exactly where the cutoff will be for multi GPU configurations. In the middle of buying a second GPU for me to test this myself with DDR4).

 

With DDR4, the difference between 2133mhz and 2800mhz is $10 on average (At least for 8gb kits) so I would personally make the investment, but if you absolutely need to save the money, buy the 2133mhz kit. If anything, you can manually overclock the 2133mhz kit to 2800mhz easily with some patience.

[buttmademewiser]

5 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Memory speed does impact gaming performance in situations with high CPU overhead. The difference varies depending on your hardware configuration (stronger GPU's like even faster memory, SLI/Crossfire benefits even more from faster memory than single cards, etc). My personal tests with a G4400 and a GTX 770 showed a difference of 10% in my minimum FPS, which is pretty good considering its a $46 kit that i overclocked for free performance.

 

I had a friend of mine with a 4790k and 3 GTX 780's run the same test, with 1600mhz DDR3 and 2400mhz DDR3, and he found the difference to be even greater, with his minimum framerates improving by a massive 20% in some titles. The two of us are currently working on a comprehensive guide to post on multiple forums, with an internal guide for memory overclocking, including which specific timings give the most bandwidth, and their impact gaming in general. Once I finish helping with that, I'll try to get the information on this forum, along with a video to explain our process and how to replicate it yourselves.

 

That being said, the law of diminishing returns applies here. In my personal tests, going beyond 2800mhz didn't yield any extra performance on my 3000mhz and 3200mhz runs. 2800mhz seems to be the sweet spot for single GPU configurations. My friend noticed exactly the same thing with DDR3 at 2400mhz, in a single GPU configuration. HOWEVER, he noticed an improvement going to 2666mhz on his DDR3 kit (He couldn't get his kit beyond 2666mhz, so we can't tell exactly where the cutoff will be for multi GPU configurations. In the middle of buying a second GPU for me to test this myself with DDR4).

 

With DDR4, the difference between 2133mhz and 2800mhz is $10 on average (At least for 8gb kits) so I would personally make the investment, but if you absolutely need to save the money, buy the 2133mhz kit. If anything, you can manually overclock the 2133mhz kit to 2800mhz easily with some patience.

thanks for the detailed response. The rig will cost over 3k after monitors so I'll probably go with the 3000mhz kit as 10€ price difference is so little that I might as well.

[SteveGrabowski0]

While my testing is nowhere near as exhaustive as MageTank's, by replacing my 2x4GB CAS 11 DDR3-1600 kit with a 2x8GB CAS 11 DDR3-2400 kit my minimum framerate in GTA V increased by 9.5% and in Fallout 4 it went up by 15%, in my system with a Xeon E3-1231v3 for the cpu, GTX 970 for the GPU, MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition for the board, and running 1080p. This is with no tweaking whatsoever, all I did was go into BIOS and click the button to use the XMP profile. Both of those results are easily noticeable in gameplay.

[SteveGrabowski0]

25 minutes ago, buttmademewiser said:

thanks for the detailed response. The rig will cost over 3k after monitors so I'll probably go with the 3000mhz kit as 10€ price difference is so little that I might as well.

 

It definitely makes sense to buy faster RAM. The cost is pretty minimal unless you go to the highest end kits where price shoots way up. I don't follow DDR4 prices since I use a Z97 system, but with DDR3 anything up to DDR3-2400 is basically the same price as DDR3-1600, which is why I went with DDR3-2400 after seeing the Digital Foundry videos showing the impact of fast RAM in gaming.

[Nena Trinity]

Every MHz bump will increase performance in games little by little!

[vanished]

1 hour ago, Sakkura said:

 

Here you go.

 

 

thanks

[ybriK]

In gaming it does, anything over 2400MHz does have an impact on gaming. Obviously it will eventually hit a ceiling due to the game/hardware setup.