Faster CPU or faster RAM?

[sbakic]

Question is, is it better to have a little lower CPU speed and to have higher RAM speed, for gaming, programming, production?

For example:
4 Ghz CPU and 2133 RAM

3.95 Ghz CPU and 2133+ (2400, 2666, 2800, 3000) RAM
3.9 Ghz CPU and 2400+ (2666, 2800 3000) RAM

Because I tested speeds of CPU and RAM with AIDA cash and ram benchmark and i got next results:
RAM 2133 Mhz: read 32 GB/s, write 32 GB/s, copy 32 GB/s
RAM 2400 Mhz: read 36GB/s, write 36 GB/s, copy 36 GB/s
RAM 2666 Mhz: read 42 GB/s, write 42 GB/s, copy 42 GB/s
RAM 2800 Mhz: read 43 GB/s, write 43 GB/s, copy 43 GB/s
RAM 3000 Mhz: read 42 GB/s, write 42 GB/s, copy 40 GB/s

CPU 3.9Ghz
L1: read 966 GB/s, write 484 GB/s, copy 965 GB/s
L2: read 909 GB/s, write 465 GB/s, copy 777 GB/s
L3: read 402 GB/s, write 406 GB/s, copy  425 GB/s

CPU 4Ghz
L1: read 990 GB/s, write 497 GB/s, copy 990GB/s
L2: read 949 GB/s, write 497 GB/s, copy 833 GB/s
L3: read 410 GB/s, write 412 GB/s, copy 473 GB/s

There is big difference between 3.9Ghz and 4Ghz in cash speed, with RAM 2133 -> 2800 there is 10GB/s boost. And when I think that all programs are stored in RAM for the most time, is it better to have faster RAM? Sorry for my OCD.

[Godlygamer23]

Do you have any programs that you can use to test the different settings? That's going to be your best bet in determining what changes affect what. Cinebench is a good place to start for production testing.

[ProjectBox153]

It still depends on what CPU you're talking about. There are bigger differences other than speed. You could have a 3.4GHz P4 vs a 8700K running at 2.0GHz. Which would win? The 8700K. 

[yian88]

Depends on what do you do with the PC, most programs dont ever require that kind of RAM bandwidth, ever. 

You will have to test out the most important apps you are using because i will tell you that you wont see any difference with most apps with any of those setups, only in niche cases and syntetic benchmarks they will show differences.

If its something like games the go for 4ghz and 2133 ram and lower the ram timings as low as possible that will give you best results, since games precache their data and dont do a lot of in memory copy or writes during gameplay, even if its large open world it either has loading screens or streams data from hard-drive/memory which isnt RAM intensive, at least not enough no notice a difference.

Test everything, aida 64 doesnt mean anything in real world its just max possible brute performance.

 

[whoisit1118]

Ryzen will see a much more RAM dependent performance gains. In the case of Intel, not as significant.

[sbakic]

Just now, whoisit1118 said:

Ryzen will see a much more RAM dependent performance gains. In the case of Intel, not as significant.

I am not talking about faster RAM for the same CPU clock, I am talking about faster RAM for lower CPU clock.

[KarathKasun]

Both.

 

You want highest CPU clock while still keeping RAM at 2800-3200.

 

I would not trade core clock for memory clock to go beyond 3200.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

14 hours ago, sbakic said:

I am not talking about faster RAM for the same CPU clock, I am talking about faster RAM for lower CPU clock.

It doesn't matter, @whoisit1118's comment is still relevant: the net effect of lowering CPU speeds and increasing RAM speeds obviously depends on the performance impact of increasing RAM speeds, among other things. And said impact will be higher in Ryzen than in other architectures.

[JoostinOnline]

9 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

It doesn't matter, @whoisit1118's comment is still relevant: the net effect of lowering CPU speeds and increasing RAM speeds obviously depends on the performance impact of increasing RAM speeds, among other things. And said impact will be higher in Ryzen than in other architectures.

Just to add to this:

 

[sbakic]

12 hours ago, KarathKasun said:

Both.

 

You want highest CPU clock while still keeping RAM at 2800-3200.

 

I would not trade core clock for memory clock to go beyond 3200.

Would you trade CPU 4Ghz and RAM 2133, to CPU 3.95GHz and RAM 2133+ (2400 or 2800)? 

[Blademaster91]

What CPU would you pair it with?

Clock speed and ram matters though you may not notice 2400 or 2800Mhz ram in general use scenarios but the upgrade to 3200Mhz can be worth it if you want a few more FPS or the fastest possible rendering times.

[KarathKasun]

5 hours ago, sbakic said:

Would you trade CPU 4Ghz and RAM 2133, to CPU 3.95GHz and RAM 2133+ (2400 or 2800)? 

I would not trade core clock for memory clock above 3200.  Which logically means that I would trade Core clock for memory clock to get to 3200.

 

Though, with the clocks being talking about this is obviously Ryzen.  And Ryzen disproportionately gains performance from faster memory speeds.

 

Having overclocked Ryzen, you dont have to trade one for another until 2933 anyway.

[sbakic]

On 3/12/2018 at 5:10 PM, KarathKasun said:

I would not trade core clock for memory clock above 3200.  Which logically means that I would trade Core clock for memory clock to get to 3200.

 

Though, with the clocks being talking about this is obviously Ryzen.  And Ryzen disproportionately gains performance from faster memory speeds.

 

Having overclocked Ryzen, you dont have to trade one for another until 2933 anyway.

I want to add, you should first OC RAM to 3200 CL14 and you don't need to go above that. And after that OC CPU as much as you can. There is big difference between 2933 CL15 or CL 16 and 3200 CL14.

[KarathKasun]

On 3/14/2018 at 10:05 AM, sbakic said:

I want to add, you should first OC RAM to 3200 CL14 and you don't need to go above that. And after that OC CPU as much as you can. There is big difference between 2933 CL15 or CL 16 and 3200 CL14.

2933 CL13-14 is just about as fast as 3200 CL 14.  Ive been there and done that.