Why buy premium ram?

[ComputerOtter]

Hey everyone.  

 

I was wondering, if ram speed doesn't make an impact on performance, then why do people buy premium ram such as dominator platinum sticks?  What is the benefit?  

Is it just because they look cool?  I am ok with buying things for aesthetic purposes, I just don't get why there are so many different styles if performance doesn't seem to matter. 

[VolkA]

4 minutes ago, ComputerOtter said:

Hey everyone.  

 

I was wondering, if ram speed doesn't make an impact on performance, then why do people buy premium ram such as dominator platinum sticks?  What is the benefit?  

Is it just because they look cool?  I am ok with buying things for aesthetic purposes, I just don't get why there are so many different styles if performance doesn't seem to matter. 

I think the performance does matter. But just not by a lot if you are referring to fps in games. the differences will usually be like 5 fps or so. Not sure about the rest, but for me I'm buying it mainly for looks... Haha.

[Guest]

Just now, Name Taken said:

#RGB

dom plat has no RGB yet

[NerdyNoob]

10 minutes ago, ComputerOtter said:

Hey everyone.  

 

I was wondering, if ram speed doesn't make an impact on performance, then why do people buy premium ram such as dominator platinum sticks?  What is the benefit?  

Is it just because they look cool?  I am ok with buying things for aesthetic purposes, I just don't get why there are so many different styles if performance doesn't seem to matter. 

Ehh, Ram speed makes a slight difference, but I think premium ram is really just for showing off in most cases.

[HKZeroFive]

I'm going to copy and paste a previous post of mine because I can't be bothered to type out a response every single time for all these "faster RAM doesn't affect performance" threads. Spoiler alert: you're wrong.

 

"The bottom line is this; the biggest benefit of faster memory is higher minimum framerates. However, if you're in a CPU-bound scenario/game where the CPU is essentially the bottleneck, you will see that faster memory boosts the average framerate."

Here are a few videos to support this argument:

Spoiler

 

 

1080p/Titan X Pascal OC	Core i7 7700K Stock	Core i7 7700K Stock	Core i7 7700K Stock	Core i7 7700K 4.8GHz	Core i7 7700K 4.8GHz	Core i7 7700K 4.8GHz
DDR4 Clock Speed	3000MHz	2400MHz	2133MHz	3000MHz	2400MHz	2133MHz
Assassin's Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA	132.2	129.3	125.3	132.9	129.8	126.6
Ashes of the Singularity, DX12, CPU Test	41.9	38.2	36.2	44.1	40.4	37.4
Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA T2x	138.2	135.0	132.8	145.5	140.7	138.0
The Division, Ultra, SMAA	133.8	133.6	132.1	133.9	133.2	132.6
Far Cry Primal, Ultra, SMAA	137.9	127.5	121.2	140.1	134.4	126.5
Rise of the Tomb Raider DX12, Very High, SMAA	126.5	114.9	108.1	131.0	121.1	111.0
The Witcher 3, Ultra, No Hairworks	139.4	125.7	116.6	145.2	130.8	120.2

 

Dominator Platinums are just for the looks. There's no performance reason to get them over something like the G.Skill TridentZs which use the best memory controllers (Samsung B-die) which can come in handy for memory overclocking. 

[JoostinOnline]

20 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

Dominator Platinums are just for the looks.

Just to go on top of this, RAM heatsinks don't really do anything for temperatures. They just look bad ass. Now that it's common to have at least a small window in the side of your case, looks play a significant factor in purchases most of the time.