RAM Speed vs. RAM Amount

[MEKsLP]

I am in the process of buying components for my PC and am curious what is a recommended balance between speed and amount when it comes to RAM. For example if I was throwing a few extra bucks into the purchase should I upgrade 8 gigs from DD3 1600 to 1866 OR should I buy 12-16 gigs of DD3 1600?

Thanks for any advice!

[Corrado]

My guess is that over 8GB, you'll notice speed more so than quantity unless you're doing something that is a huge memory hog like high resolution photo editing or CAD design. That said, I'm guessing you won't notice much of a difference going from 1600 to 1866. 1-3% increase in speed is not verifiable or usually noticeable. Its sometimes even considered within the margin of error in benchmarks.

[FuturePastNow]

Amount is far more important than speed. You, and the apps you run, will notice zero difference between 1600 and 1866 MHz memory. Go for the 12-16 gigs.

[JustAnEngineer]

Buy 4 GiB DIMMs rather than lower-density 2 GiB DIMMs. Thus, 2x 4 GiB = 8 GiB or 4x 4 GiB = 16 GiB would be reasonable amounts of memory to purchase for a Sandy Bridge system.

There's not much of a real-world performance difference between PC3-10600, PC3-12800, PC3-15000 or PC3-17000 (DDR3-"1333", "1600", "1866" or "2133", respectively). There is a real-world effect on your wallet, since they are priced at $50, $64, $72¼ or $100 per 8 GiB, respectively.

There's no harm in using faster memory. If you want to spend the extra $22¼ per 8 GiB for e-peen bragging rights, that's okay.

[emorgoch]

You'll probably find this article very convenient then. Good timing for you.

As for capacity vs. speed, it will depend on what you're doing with your system. Super-fast RAM won't help you at all if all your memory is used up and the system has to trash to disk. Conversely, if you're tasks only use up a small amount of memory, but it's heavily using that amount, higher-bandwidth/lower latency memory will show a higher performance impact.

[luisnhamue]

if u choose to go with more capacity it will be good. I've read some articles about sandy bridge and memory scaling. a 1333mhz ram with cl7 is enough for almost whatever u can do. If u want more performance, oc the cpu.

[Jigar]

More Ram is never enough. Go for it...

[Jigar]

:wink: if u choose to go with more capacity it will be good. I've read some articles about sandy bridge and memory scaling. a 1333mhz ram with cl7 is enough for almost whatever u can do. If u want more performance, oc the cpu.

You might have read Anandtech's latest Memory Scaling Review.

[luisnhamue]

yeah, and you might have done that too. Techreport just posted some news about DDR3 price dropping,
given that ram speed is no longer a hindrance to CPU oc'ing, its time to go for more ram amount.
Im about to build my rig, and by the time I'll start (August end), I will go for 16BG.