Fallout 4 sugested RAM.

[Reviyee]

I'm currently using a 1600 MHz (Low, I know.) 4 x 2 GB ram sticks by G.Skill

Fallout 4 is currently using about 80% of my gpu, 35 to 40% of my CPU and ALL of my RAM, about 7050 MB.

 

If I want to boost my FPS, should I get more of the same ram (another 2x4GB sticks) or faster RAM?

I must decide between 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz or 8 GB of a faster ram.

Also: Can I combine different speeds sticks?

 

I appreciate everyone's answers and tips.

[Daniel Z.]

You should be able to combine, but it may not work/run slower

[ARikozuM]

You can combine speeds, but they'll all run at the lowest speed. CAS can be different for each channel but will fit the lowest of said channel. 

 

I'd get 4x4GB of 1866MHz only if you have a Z-chipset.

[LogicalDrm]

I don't think adding RAM will directly give you higher fps. It should come smoother experience and remove some stutter related to RAM maxing out. Imo you should also go for capacity over speed.

[Reviyee]

2 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

I don't think adding RAM will directly give you higher fps. It should come smoother experience and remove some stutter related to RAM maxing out. Imo you should also go for capacity over speed.

But is 16 GB  at 1600 MHz better than, say 12 GB at 1333 ?

 

Edit because I f*cked up...

 

Is 16 GB at 1600 better than 8 GB at 2400 when I need to work with big textures?

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, Reviyee said:

Is 16 GB at 1600 better than 8 GB at 2400 ?

Capacity helps until you're adding more than you need. If your program and OS use 8GB, 16GB won't help.

 

Having faster RAM helps the CPU do all of its calculations as quickly as possible. Some games will show this as increased Hz while others show it as a narrowing between minimum and average Hz. 

[2FA]

Fallout 4 will benefit more from higher RAM speeds since it has a large amount of draw calls, the difference can be up to 15%.

[LogicalDrm]

13 minutes ago, Reviyee said:

But is 16 GB  at 1600 MHz better than, say 12 GB at 1333 ?

 

Edit because I f*cked up...

 

Is 16 GB at 1600 better than 8 GB at 2400 when I need to work with big textures?

16gigs. Also getting 1600 CL9 is better than 2400 CL12.

[LogicalDrm]

Just now, DeadEyePsycho said:

Fallout 4 will benefit more from higher RAM speeds since it has a large amount of draw calls, the difference can be up to 15%.

But against capacity and how many fps that 15% is?

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

But against capacity and how many fps that 15% is?

A lot

http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page6.html

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

A lot

http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page6.html

That's one well optimized game. That in mind, it's 34fps between slower than previous gamers norm and highest you can run on DDR3. Would the hit be still bad if it would be 1866 or 2133? And is it still preferred over capacity. No need to reply, I'm just wondering.

[ARikozuM]

7 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

That's one well optimized game. That in mind, it's 34fps between slower than previous gamers norm and highest you can run on DDR3. Would the hit be still bad if it would be 1866 or 2133? And is it still preferred over capacity. No need to reply, I'm just wondering.

Capacity helps as long as the game uses it. Refer to my example above. 

 

Game A needs about 8GB of RAM and you have 4GB. Adding 4GB RAM will give you more performance since the CPU doesn't have to guess or fetch data from a disk. 

Same game, but you have 8GB and you add 4GB. No performance boost will occur because the RAM isn't utilized. At this point it comes down to speed (bandwidth) and latency. As bandwidth increases CAS Latency may increase, but the latency of the RAM will still lower overall since the RAM is accessible over more cycles. 

 

TL;DR: More RAM until no more utilization occurs and then faster RAM makes a difference. There's no reason to have an overclockable chipset without buying faster RAM around the sweet spot 1866/2133MHz (DDR3) or 2800/3000MHz (DDR4).

[Bouzoo]

Based on what I know about F4, could you sell your current ram and go for 2x8 GB 2133 MHz? How expensive would that be in your country? 

[Reviyee]

On 2017-6-2 at 10:23 AM, Bouzoo said:

Based on what I know about F4, could you sell your current ram and go for 2x8 GB 2133 MHz? How expensive would that be in your country? 

My current ram is $82 USD, I was thinking on buying the same ram again, that'd be 16 gb of 1600 ddr3 memory.

My current motherboard doesn't support DDR4, so I'm stuck with DDR3 memory. The only option I have is DDR3 16GB 2133MHz (2x 8GB), which is currently priced at $149 USD. I imagine that's what I should go for?

[ARikozuM]

12 minutes ago, Reviyee said:

My current ram is $82 USD, I was thinking on buying the same ram again, that'd be 16 gb of 1600 ddr3 memory.

My current motherboard doesn't support DDR4, so I'm stuck with DDR3 memory. The only option I have is DDR3 16GB 2133MHz (2x 8GB), which is currently priced at $149 USD. I imagine that's what I should go for?

16GB will seldomly be fully used by games which is where you want to be and the 2133MHz will serve you well if your chipset supports it.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Fallout 4 benefited enormously from faster RAM when I last played it back in 2015. With a GTX 970 and Xeon E3-1231v3 I went from my framerate dips being in the high 40s to being always above 60 fps just from moving from 8GB DDR3-1600 to 16GB DDR3-2400. I don't think it was the capacity because I never came close to using 8GB when running the game, but the difference was huge. I was running with most settings maxed at 1080p,. Except no HBAO+, godrays at medium, and one of the draw distance settings was high or medium, I forget. But I'm talking the main Fallout 4 game. On the Far Harbor DLC I regularly got drops into the 40s in foggy areas that was straight gpu related, since my gpu was pinned at 100%. Of all the games I have played on my PC Fallout 4 was the one that was by far the most sensitive to RAM speed. I can't vouch for if that's the case in 2017 but it definitely was in 2015 when I was playing the game a lot.

 

Also don't worry about CAS latency increasing with increasing clockspeed. CAS latency is always given in terms of clock cycles of latency, but latency as actually experienced is a time. CAS latency is the number of cycles of latency while clockspeed is the number of cycles per second. So the actual latency (a time) is given by

 

latency = (cycles latency)/(cycles per second) = CAS_NUMBER/CLOCKSPEED

 

So CAS 9 DDR3 1600 runs at 800 MHZ and would have latency

 

9 cycle/(800 MHz) = 9 cycle/(800*10^6 cycle/second) = 11.25 nanosecond

 

CAS 11 DDR3 2400 runs at 1200 MHz and would have latency

 

11 cycle/(1200 MHz) = 11 cycle/(1200*10^6 cycle/second) = 9.17 nanosecond

 

So CAS 11 DDR3-2400 has less latency than CAS 9 DDR3-1600. And DDR3-2400 has must faster throughput running at 1200MHz vs the 800MHz that DDR3-1600 has.

[SteveGrabowski0]

I will caution that most games won't respond much to fast RAM if you're targeting 60 fps. The big ones I know that do are Fallout 4, GTA V, and The Witcher 3. I'm sure there are others but the games that improve from fast RAM are usually games that hit the cpu hard. However, not all games that demand a strong cpu improve from faster RAM. For instance, Crysis 3 hammers your cpu like hell but fast RAM makes almost no difference in the game's performance. Most of the difference you'll notice with faster RAM comes from smoothing out dips in your framerate unless you're using a low-end cpu like an i3 or a Pentium G4560; in that case it can really help your average framerate too.