Does ram speed matter in gaming?

[Frankieanime158]

In a bit of an argument with my brother on this, so just want some clarification.

Up until today, I had 8gb of DDR3 1333mhz in 4 sticks, 2gb a piece. Paired with my 960, in Black Ops 3, I was getting

about 80fps on medium/low settings, at 90% render resolution of 1080p.

I just upgraded today to 16gb of HyperX 1866, and now I can crank absolutely everything to max on 1080p other then leaving 

shadows on medium. Before, textures were on medium, and everything else was either low, disabled or rarely medium.

Otherwise I lagged pretty badly. But now I don't even get a slight stutter or hickup, and textures are on extra and everything

else absolute max including AA and AF.

My brother says it's my amount of ram, not the speed of it, where I say it's the speed. I feel it's the speed because never 

did my ram usage hit above 80% when running black ops 3.

So what tasks is ram used for while gaming, and does the speed actually make a difference?

[Naeaes]

Generally speaking, it varies by the game, but it's very rare that speed matters. I hear Fallout 4 can get more FPS with faster RAM and that's the only one I've heard of. 

I'm not that familiar with Black Ops per se, but I'd say it's the amount, not speed. That's most often the case.

[malon]

Best way to test this theory is to just take out 8 gb of ram, i know the recomended amount of ram is 8 gig so it might have been a ram shortage since ram frequency isnt that much of a influance in games

[b.macpherson]

Super weird that you saw saw this behaviour, as a general rule, no it shouldn't make a difference, and if it does, the difference would be that marginal that you wouldn't notice the difference.

 

Did you change any other hardware? Maybe one of your old sticks of RAM were dying or something like that and that's why you were seeing the performance degradation.

[NavyCuda]

I picked up about 5fps with the same settings in Arma3 single player going from 1333 to 1600.  My ram is 1600 that I ran at 1333 for years.

[vorticalbox]

with dedicated graphics not so much but faster ram 100% helps with on board graphics like amd APUs

[Frankieanime158]

11 minutes ago, b.macpherson said:

Super weird that you saw saw this behaviour, as a general rule, no it shouldn't make a difference, and if it does, the difference would be that marginal that you wouldn't notice the difference.

 

Did you change any other hardware? Maybe one of your old sticks of RAM were dying or something like that and that's why you were seeing the performance degradation.

Nope, nothing has changed except for the ram. And the ram was also functioning 100%. I got the 8gb brand new about 5 months ago, never had any issues with it. My motherboard also has an indicator light telling me if they're running perfectly fine. 

But alright guys, thanks I appreciate it  I think speed matters more up until you hit that 1600 spot that's most common. When I had my other board, it had DDR2. When I had 8gb of that, it was literally unplayable. But once I swapped it for DDR3, of the same amount, but 1333 instead of 800, it was a world of a difference. I got a new CPU and set up about 2 weeks ago, only thing I was still using was the 1333 ddr3. 

I'll try that though, using 1 stick rather than the 2 to see for sure.

[Thony]

No the speed doesnt matter unless u compar some old ddr2 800Mhz with ddr3 1600Mhz thenu  might see some minimal differences. Games load data from GPU VRAM not RAM.

[Bhav]

53 minutes ago, Thread212 said:

Uhhh.. NO.

Erm yes, 1 FPS max increase, 2 FPS min increase with the 3200 Mhz ram.

 

Though its not much.

 

But then my ram runs at 3200 Mhz 13-13-13-26-1T timings, the increase in min and max FPS at those timings is going to be more significant, and more so from running at 1T instead of 2T.

 

Those memory speed comparisons never do any fine tweaking with the ram, so ofc the 'faster' ram isnt going to be much better because the timings are also higher.

[Bhav]

Well yes, I just also had to mention it.

 

I looked at the full review you took that graph from, and in a lot of games the 3200 ram actually performs worse than the slower ram because of its higher timings.

 

I wish someone could make one of these ram speed comparisons with the ram at the same timings and increasing clocks.