2400 MHz Memory Upgrade

[Hood]

I am waiting for NewEgg to send the Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 MHz (8 GB kit) I ordered, and it occurred to me that maybe I'm wasting my money, because I'm already getting over 20,000 MB/s now with cheap 1600 sticks. Some reviews of the Beast 2400 kit show about the same throughput (around 25,000 MB/s), but the latency is much lower 32 ns instead of the 52 ns I'm getting now. My question is, can you really feel the difference in responsiveness, or can you only tell the difference in benchmarks? Will memory-intensive tasks get done quicker? Hoping that some of you who have done this upgrade can tell the difference. Thanks in advance for any replies.

[ruff0r]

Originally Posted by Hood

I am waiting for NewEgg to send the Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 MHz (8 GB kit) I ordered, and it occurred to me that maybe I'm wasting my money, because I'm already getting over 20,000 MB/s now with cheap 1600 sticks. Some reviews of the Beast 2400 kit show about the same throughput (around 25,000 MB/s), but the latency is much lower 32 ns instead of the 52 ns I'm getting now. My question is, can you really feel the difference in responsiveness, or can you only tell the difference in benchmarks? Will memory-intensive tasks get done quicker? Hoping that some of you who have done this upgrade can tell the difference. Thanks in advance for any replies.

Difference from 1600 to 2400 is mostly around 2-4% IN best and yes you will mostly notice it in benchmark but you will notice it greatly in price.

I would suggest you get yourself a good 1600kit and OC it to 1866 or 2100 with low latency.

[drdeathx]

All you get is more bandwidth and real world apps don't benefit a whole lot. I use GSkill Tridents 2400MHz cas 10 only because it was free... and looks cool.

[Hood]

Originally Posted by ruff0r

and yes you will mostly notice it in benchmark but you will notice it greatly in price.

Since the price is only $65 for 8 GB, I figure it's worth a try. The Beast gets good reviews, on some sites it beats Dominator Platinum 2400 in benchmarks.

[drdeathx]

Why not

[james888]

I think this review sums it up nicely
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/s...-the-best-ddr3

[drdeathx]

With good memory and low cas and high frequencies, you can get down to low 30's for Latency in Aida and read/write speeds of 26,000Mb/s. Anandtech shows low 40's for latencies. Just sayin

[Hood]

Well, they look better than my old sticks! I'll at least have the satisfaction of better benchmark scores. Time to save my pennies towards a GTX 670 or two and open up my last bottleneck.

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by Hood

I am waiting for NewEgg to send the Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 MHz (8 GB kit) I ordered, and it occurred to me that maybe I'm wasting my money, because I'm already getting over 20,000 MB/s now with cheap 1600 sticks. Some reviews of the Beast 2400 kit show about the same throughput (around 25,000 MB/s), but the latency is much lower 32 ns instead of the 52 ns I'm getting now. My question is, can you really feel the difference in responsiveness, or can you only tell the difference in benchmarks? Will memory-intensive tasks get done quicker? Hoping that some of you who have done this upgrade can tell the difference. Thanks in advance for any replies.

It will make a difference, but is it worth it? I can't say I notice any additional responsiveness, but here's my result in 3DMark11 going from 1600 Cas11 to 2133 Cas9:

At 4.4Ghz, just by changing the DDR3 memory timings from 800 (1600) to 1067 (2133), the score went from P8272 to P8377

1.3% bump there.

Not really a fair comparison, as I didn't exclude the GPU scores.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/sh...postcount=1539

[Hood]

I just got done installing and tweaking the new Beast 2400 memory, and you guys were right, it's not a huge jump, but it's there, all my benchmarks saw a slight increase. In Aida64 memory test, read-24466 MB/s, write-23087, copy-27343, latency 34.0 ns. Even WEI went from 8.0 to 8.2 for memory. I'm satisfied, knowing that my system is just a little bit faster/closer to peak performance. In a month or two, 2400 kits might be only $50 - if so, I may buy another of these for total 16 GB.

[NdMk2o1o]

Should of bought some Gskill 1600mhz, they oc to 2133 easily at stock volts, anywho enjoy your new temp e-peen upgrade

[nleksan]

For what it's worth, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with memory speeds/timings, and I haveffound that the biggest difference is (perhaps obviously) in benchmarks.
However, contrary to the popular notion that memory speed is LIMITED to benchmarks, I have found that there is indeed an advantage to having high speed memory for gaming.

The faster your memory (assuming everything else remains the same), the higher your minimum in-game frame rate. The higher the min fps, the more likely that you will have a smooth gaming experience, as you won't suffer any/as many slow-downs or stuttering.
The sweet spot is 2133 with the tightest timings you can get, which for me with my Ripjaws Z 16GB 4x4 2133 9-11-10-28 1.65v kit is 2133 8-10-9-26 1T 1.705v.
I have some quick numbers for you, from testing a few recent games... (RAM Speed, Timings, Min FPS for Games 1-3):
DDR3-1333 6-7-6-15 = 25.2 29.3 39.5
DDR3-1600 7-8-7-21 = 25.9 31.2 40.8
DDR3-1866 9-9-9-24 = 27.4 35.3 44.1
DDR3-2133 9-11-10-28 = 30.1 38.1 47.8
DDR3-2133 8-10-9-26 = 32.0 39.7 48.7
DDR3-2400 9-12-10-28 = 32.7 40.3 48.9
DDR3-2560 9-12-11-31 = 33.4 40.9 49.7
DDR3-2666 10-13-12-32 = 33.7 41.2 49.9
DDR3-2666 10-12-11-31 = 33.9 41.5 50.1

These benchmarks are averaged between my 3930K (4.8Ghz) + Rampage 4 Extreme, and 3770K (4.8Ghz) + GA-Z77X-UP7, except for the 2666 runs as the IMC on SNB-E just can't get up there.

The games I've used are BF3, Far Cry 3, Metro2033, BF3, and a half dozen others. Every game has shown improvements, some more drastic and some less so.

[jmcslob]

I'd to say thank you hood for this thread as I was about to do the same thing....

Now I know....just go 1866 or 2133 low cas...as they run about the same price +/- $10

[Hood]

Originally Posted by jmcslob

I'd to say thank you hood for this thread as I was about to do the same thing....

Now I know....just go 1866 or 2133 low cas...as they run about the same price +/- $10

I almost bought the Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 2133 kit ($65), because it has a good bit of headroom (should easily OC to 2400+ at 1.65v) and I've always had good luck with Patriot. The same kit in 1866 MHz is only $47, so if you're on a tight budget like me, that's a great deal as well.

[jmcslob]

Yeah I'm trying to stay under $500...
I can get a I5-3570 and an Asrock Extreme6 at Microcenter for $239...($254 after tax)
I think I'm going with an Intel 330 120gb $110 ($116 after tax)

Which leaves $130 for cooling and memory...knowing that 1866 or 2133 is good enough really saves me a lot...The egg carries both 1866 & 2133 8gb kits certified for that board (cas 9) for $55 each but only carries 1 set of 1866 @ 16gb for $75...The 2400 kit was $130

This thread helped me out a lot.

[Phusius]

Ram faster then 1600 does not make gaming any better correct? I just want to be 100% sure because that is mostly all I do and don't want to waste money upgrading.

[jmcslob]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Ram faster then 1600 does not make gaming any better correct? I just want to be 100% sure because that is mostly all I do and don't want to waste money upgrading.

I can't say for 100% sure but 1866 seems to be about the same price so why not get it....

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Ram faster then 1600 does not make gaming any better correct? I just want to be 100% sure because that is mostly all I do and don't want to waste money upgrading.

No, nothing tangible anyways. 1600 should be fine.

[Hood]

Originally Posted by jmcslob

The egg carries both 1866 & 2133 8gb kits certified for that board (cas 9)

I wouldn't worry too much about QVLs - all the major players (Corsair, Patriot, GSkill, Kingston, Crucial, etc.) test their sticks in all mainstream boards, and it's rare that there's a compatibility problem, especially on the last 3 generations of chipsets. For example, on my Asus P8Z77-V, the QVL is now showing RAM as high as 2600, and more vendors are added with each update, so the 2400 list gets bigger, and so on down the line. It's fairly safe to assume, therefore, that any name-brand 2400 sticks will run on my motherboard. The Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 DIMMs I just installed weren't on the list, and they run perfect. So do your search starting from lowest price, limit it by total memory size (8 GB [2 x 4 GB]) and desired speed (2133 MHz) and you'll see that the list starts at $44.99 for Kingston HyperX 2133 with tall blue heat spreaders, a solid name brand, and actually very good RAM if you have room for the absurdly tall heat sinks. I guarantee it will work with your motherboard, as will anything probably at that speed.

[jmcslob]

Originally Posted by Hood

I wouldn't worry too much about QVLs - all the major players (Corsair, Patriot, GSkill, Kingston, Crucial, etc.) test their sticks in all mainstream boards, and it's rare that there's a compatibility problem, especially on the last 3 generations of chipsets. For example, on my Asus P8Z77-V, the QVL is now showing RAM as high as 2600, and more vendors are added with each update, so the 2400 list gets bigger, and so on down the line. It's fairly safe to assume, therefore, that any name-brand 2400 sticks will run on my motherboard. The Kingston HyperX Beast 2400 DIMMs I just installed weren't on the list, and they run perfect. So do your search starting from lowest price, limit it by total memory size (8 GB [2 x 4 GB]) and desired speed (2133 MHz) and you'll see that the list starts at $44.99 for Kingston HyperX 2133 with tall blue heat spreaders, a solid name brand, and actually very good RAM if you have room for the absurdly tall heat sinks. I guarantee it will work with your motherboard, as will anything probably at that speed.

Thanks again...I haven't had an Intel setup since 2007...wasn't sure if that's how it worked and Google isn't any help and I didn't feel like asking here and then I found this thread....LOL