Low CL-value vs High memory speed?

[Mortis Angelus]

Hello,

 

I've been trying to understand if I should choose memory with high memory speed and high CL-value, or low-frequency memory with low CL-value?

 

As I've understood from other forum posts, memory speed is the most important thing. People say it is more important to have faster memory than lower latency? But I guess there must be a point where either direction stop being beneficial, or am I wrong?

 

Currently looking at DDR4 2400 CL11/12 vs DDR4 2666 CL13/14. So which one to prefer? What makes it even more confusing, is that lower latency also seem to result in a much higher price where 2666 CL13 is cheaper than 2400 CL12, which would indicate that lower CL-value is better (because the pricing is premium).  Or is this just a marketing scheme?

 

Oh, and should I go for quad or dual-channel? Try to talk me through this like I was a 10 year-old.

[Nena Trinity]

4 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Hello,

 

I've been trying to understand if I should choose memory with high memory speed and high CL-value, or low-frequency memory with low CL-value?

 

As I've understood from other forum posts, memory speed is the most important thing. People say it is more important to have faster memory than lower latency? But I guess there must be a point where either direction stop being beneficial, or am I wrong?

 

Currently looking at DDR4 2400 CL11/12 vs DDR4 2666 CL13/14. So which one to prefer? What makes it even more confusing, is that lower latency also seem to result in a much higher price where 2666 CL13 is cheaper than 2400 CL12, which would indicate that lower CL-value is better (because the pricing is premium).  Or is this just a marketing scheme?

 

Oh, and should I go for quad or dual-channel? Try to talk me through this like I was a 10 year-old.

On DDR4 MHz matters more but you wont see any measurable gains past 2800MHz, I say you should just get 2666MHz if it is not to costly...

 

Edit: CL should be lower but MHz should be higher!

[samcool55]

Get the cheapest one!

It doesn't matter! Unless you are planning to use the gpu in your cpu, and in that case faster = better.

Just get whatever is the cheapest and you will be perfectly fine if you aren't planning to game on the iGPU (that means integrated GPU because it lives with your cpu).

 

[iiNNeX]

come to the 3000+mhz club

[Mortis Angelus]

2 minutes ago, iiNNeX said:

come to the 3000+mhz club

I actually need more amount of memory than speed. I mean, I'm still on 1066 DDR3 here. Guess three times why I am looking into upgrading? But, the point was; 1066 DD3 has been quite sufficient so far, but when working in Adobe Premiere/Unreal Engine, I've been starting to run out of RAM. ^^

[iiNNeX]

1 minute ago, Mortis Angelus said:

I actually need more amount of memory than speed. I mean, I'm still on 1066 DDR3 here. Guess three times why I am looking into upgrading? But, the point was; 1066 DD3 has been quite sufficient so far, but when working in Adobe Premiere/Unreal Engine, I've been starting to run out of RAM. ^^

In that case, i'd just buy as much memory as you can in terms of amount, and go for low mhz like 2133. You will be better off with 32GB 2133 rather than 16GB 3400mhz for example, due to your specific needs.

[Mortis Angelus]

16 minutes ago, iiNNeX said:

In that case, i'd just buy as much memory as you can in terms of amount, and go for low mhz like 2133. You will be better off with 32GB 2133 rather than 16GB 3400mhz for example, due to your specific needs.

True. I just don't know if I work enough in either software to justify buying 32 gb of RAM instead of 16.... BTW; Isn't it so that Z170 does not support more than dual-channel? So max 2 RAM-sticks?

 

But returning to the main topic, iiNNex: should I even look at the CL-value or only the megahertz? What is generally considered a good CL-value for DDR4? For DDR3 CL12 was borderline to bad, but I guess the standards have changed now with DDR4?

[typographie]

41 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Oh, and should I go for quad or dual-channel? Try to talk me through this like I was a 10 year-old.

I'm honestly unsure from the wording of the question if you already know this or not, so bear with me…

 

Skylake (Z170/B150/H170/etc.) supports dual-channel mode, and does not support quad-channel. You can install as many DIMMs as you have slots for, but it will only ever offer you dual-channel—as long as the DIMMs are all installed in matching pairs. Haswell-E and Broadwell-E (X99) supports up to quad-channel, which requires memory is installed in matching sets of four.

 

Basically whether you should go for quad- or dual-channel depends on the platform you're going with. Ideally you should plan for quad-channel if you're going X99, especially as a Premiere user.

[Mortis Angelus]

3 minutes ago, typographie said:

I'm honestly unsure from the wording of the question if you already know this or not, so bear with me…

 

Skylake (Z170/B150/H170/etc.) supports dual-channel mode, and does not support quad-channel. You can install as many DIMMs as you have slots for, but it will only ever offer you dual-channel—as long as the DIMMs are all installed in matching pairs. Haswell-E and Broadwell-E (X99) supports up to quad-channel, which requires memory is installed in matching sets of four.

 

Basically whether you should go for quad- or dual-channel depends on the platform you're going with. Ideally you should plan for quad-channel if you're going X99, especially as a Premiere user.

Thanks for the reply.

 

Yeah, I haven't been able to decide if to go with a 6700K or a 5820K... It would be nice to be completely unrestricted with an X99-platform (no; I cannot see any scenario where I would need more than 28 PCI-E-lanes), but then again, keeping the costs to a minimum is also important. And as I wrote above, I'm not that active in using either Premiere and Unreal, thus I currently have a hard time justifying an X99-build. One thing I would like to do is to record/stream game play, but I have no idea how important RAM is for that, or if CPU/GPU-power is the limiting factor there?

[iiNNeX]

8 minutes ago, typographie said:

I'm honestly unsure from the wording of the question if you already know this or not, so bear with me…

 

Skylake (Z170/B150/H170/etc.) supports dual-channel mode, and does not support quad-channel. You can install as many DIMMs as you have slots for, but it will only ever offer you dual-channel—as long as the DIMMs are all installed in matching pairs. Haswell-E and Broadwell-E (X99) supports up to quad-channel, which requires memory is installed in matching sets of four.

 

Basically whether you should go for quad- or dual-channel depends on the platform you're going with. Ideally you should plan for quad-channel if you're going X99, especially as a Premiere user.

So what difference does it make if i put 4x8gb ram sticks rather than 2x16gb?

 

Just wondering as I just ordered a 4x8gb kit for my z170 Formula

[pyrojoe34]

Keep in mind timing values are directly related to Ram speed. Meaning that, for example, Ram at 1600mhz with a CL of 10 still has a higher latency than Ram at 3200mhz with a CL of 18. This is because timings are measured in number of clock cycles to perform an action, and since 3200mhz ram has twice as many cycles per second but the CL is less than double the latency, the CL 18 ram is still lower than the CL 10 Ram.

 

Having said that don't worry about RAM speeds, very few applications will even notice a difference and the cost is not worth the gains unless you have a very specific RAM based computation in mind for your computer.

[typographie]

1 hour ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Thanks for the reply.

 

Yeah, I haven't been able to decide if to go with a 6700K or a 5820K... It would be nice to be completely unrestricted with an X99-platform (no; I cannot see any scenario where I would need more than 28 PCI-E-lanes), but then again, keeping the costs to a minimum is also important. And as I wrote above, I'm not that active in using either Premiere and Unreal, thus I currently have a hard time justifying an X99-build. One thing I would like to do is to record/stream game play, but I have no idea how important RAM is for that, or if CPU/GPU-power is the limiting factor there?

In theory having more cores could help recording/streaming performance, but in practice I think it's low-impact enough that it doesn't matter as much as you might think. I seem to record and stream fine with my overclocked i5-6600K, though maybe there's a game out there so demanding of your CPU that you must have additional cores for it… I haven't found it yet, though.

Adobe Premiere is probably a best-case scenario for the 5820K, but unless you're using it professionally I'm not sure you really need it. It depends on whether or not you're comfortable waiting anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes longer for a render to finish. Unless you can put a dollar value on that amount of time, it's probably not worth spending extra for. I'd probably go with the 6700K, unless you can find a really good deal on the 5820K.

[Mortis Angelus]

14 minutes ago, typographie said:

In theory having more cores could help recording/streaming performance, but in practice I think it's low-impact enough that it doesn't matter as much as you might think. I seem to record and stream fine with my overclocked i5-6600K, though maybe there's a game out there so demanding of your CPU that you must have additional cores for it… I haven't found it yet, though.

Adobe Premiere is probably a best-case scenario for the 5820K, but unless you're using it professionally I'm not sure you really need it. It depends on whether or not you're comfortable waiting anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes longer for a render to finish. Unless you can put a dollar value on that amount of time, it's probably not worth spending extra for. I'd probably go with the 6700K, unless you can find a really good deal on the 5820K.

From where I'm buying, there's really no difference in price between the 6700K and 5820K. However, the MOBO and PSU (If I'd make the system SLI-ready....) required to run the system increases the price significantly. Especially the mobo.  But  for the sake of argument: If I would make an X99 computer with 5820K with 1 GPU only (thus same setup as a Z170), the total cost-increase would be about 150 euros. Is it worth the money? There's a lot you can buy for 150 Euros, now that I think about it.

[typographie]

8 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

But  for the sake of argument: If I would make an X99 computer with 5820K with 1 GPU only (thus same setup as a Z170), the total cost-increase would be about 150 euros. Is it worth the money?

In my opinion, no. Spending €150 on a better video card or monitor would make a much bigger difference to gaming than the 5820K.

[DXMember]

most of the stuff happens in cache, you need RAM only when you run out of cache and then you're screwed either way

so it's better to get a CPU with more cache

[SteveGrabowski0]

47 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

From where I'm buying, there's really no difference in price between the 6700K and 5820K. However, the MOBO and PSU (If I'd make the system SLI-ready....) required to run the system increases the price significantly. Especially the mobo.  But  for the sake of argument: If I would make an X99 computer with 5820K with 1 GPU only (thus same setup as a Z170), the total cost-increase would be about 150 euros. Is it worth the money? There's a lot you can buy for 150 Euros, now that I think about it.

The 6700k is a better gaming cpu than the 5820k.

 

 

 

Also RAM speed matters in many games that hit the cpu hard. No reason to cheap out on memory when you're buying premium everything else. An extra $20-$30 for a nice DDR4-3000 kit makes sense when you consider how small a fraction of the total system price it is.

[Mortis Angelus]

2 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Also RAM speed matters in many games that hit the cpu hard. No reason to cheap out on memory when you're buying premium everything else. An extra $20-$30 for a nice DDR4-3000 kit makes sense when you consider how small a fraction of the total system price it is.

But then again, is 2666 really that slow? Considering DDR3 2666 was "fast" and that most stuff never used more than 2400 Mhz, is it really utilized properly when going 2800+ mhz? There was someone else in the thread that there is no real benefit of going above 2800. But I guess the closest to that is a kit of 3000s..

 

Point question was: am I really bottlenecking with 2400 - 2600 mhz?

[typographie]

1 hour ago, Mortis Angelus said:

But then again, is 2666 really that slow? Considering DDR3 2666 was "fast" and that most stuff never used more than 2400 Mhz, is it really utilized properly when going 2800+ mhz? There was someone else in the thread that there is no real benefit of going above 2800. But I guess the closest to that is a kit of 3000s..

 

Point question was: am I really bottlenecking with 2400 - 2600 mhz?

Here's some benchmarking that might interest you:

They used an i5-6500 which isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to the 6700K or 5820K, but it's still Skylake so I think it's relevant. Note that these are mostly worst-case (but realistic) scenarios for the CPU/RAM, and there is upwards of a 10–20 FPS difference at times between DDR4-2133 and DDR4-3200. In particular The Witcher 3 data from around 2:12 is very useful—you spend many, many hours running around in dense, busy areas like that in that game.

 

Personally I think 2666 or 2800 MHz is a good sweet spot. The performance difference is enough to occasionally matter, but maybe not enough to be worth spending big premiums for ultra-fast RAM. Depends on what your local pricing is like and what you're willing to pay. But if the question is if it matters, yes, to some degree it does.

[typographie]

4 hours ago, iiNNeX said:

So what difference does it make if i put 4x8gb ram sticks rather than 2x16gb?

 

Just wondering as I just ordered a 4x8gb kit for my z170 Formula

It probably makes no difference whatsoever. Both options are perfectly valid for dual-channel mode.

2x16 is more convenient because it allows you to add another more later without replacing anything on a four-slot motherboard, but most people are unlikely to need even that much.

[Mortis Angelus]

49 minutes ago, typographie said:

Personally I think 2666 or 2800 MHz is a good sweet spot. The performance difference is enough to occasionally matter, but maybe not enough to be worth spending big premiums for ultra-fast RAM. Depends on what your local pricing is like and what you're willing to pay. But if the question is if it matters, yes, to some degree it does.

Okay, so the site I'm looking at (mindfactory.de) sells HyperX Savage 2800 CL14 for 85 EUR, but Corsair Vengence 3000 CL15 for 60 EUR. Considering the pricing, the Corsair should be the obvious choice. But this now revolvs back to the original thread-question: Will 3000 Mhz CL15 be better than 2800 CL14?

 

Side-question: Considering there is a plethora of manufacturers making the exact same RAM, what is really the difference? Why choose Corsair over G.skill or Kingston over GeIL or something like that? I mean, the SAME manufacturer can have two separate 3000 Mhz CL15 sticks, where one model costs 65 EUR, and the other one cost 85 euros - all while being made by the same manufacturers and having seemingly identical specs. Why?

[typographie]

15 minutes ago, Mortis Angelus said:

Okay, so the site I'm looking at (mindfactory.de) sells HyperX Savage 2800 CL14 for 85 EUR, but Corsair Vengence 3000 CL15 for 60 EUR. Considering the pricing, the Corsair should be the obvious choice. But this now revolvs back to the original thread-question: Will 3000 Mhz CL15 be better than 2800 CL14?

 

Side-question: Considering there is a plethora of manufacturers making the exact same RAM, what is really the difference? Why choose Corsair over G.skill or Kingston over GeIL or something like that? I mean, the SAME manufacturer can have two separate 3000 Mhz CL15 sticks, where one model costs 65 EUR, and the other one cost 85 euros - all while being made by the same manufacturers and having seemingly identical specs. Why?

The pricing for memory doesn't always seem to make sense even in the U.S., so I can't really tell you. If the specs are identical then the reason probably isn't technical. It could also have something to do with distribution, availability, or fees in Europe. I can only speculate.

 

I'm unsure if 3000 MHz @ CL 15 would be faster than 2800 MHz @ CL 14. My guess is that they're probably indistinguishable. But if you save €25 with the 3000 MHz kit, that sounds like the clearly better choice to me.

 

There are many perfectly good RAM companies, but they're all basically selling the same product. Most of them don't even manufacture RAM, they're all buying it from Samsung or SK-Hynix and putting their name on it. As long as they give you a good warranty I think they're fine. Corsair is a great choice, so is G.Skill, Kingston/HyperX, Crucial, etc.