Just a quick one today - is it better to run 8GB DDR3 at 1866MHz, or add another 8GB of 1600MHz for a total of 16GB at 1600MHz? Uses: games (with 2x GTX670s in SLI), web, music, photos. Cheers!
If by games, web, music, photos you mean playing games, surfing the web, viewing photos, and playing music then faster will be better. However if you are heavily editing photos in PS etc then more memory would serve best.
In practice, assuming the above usage assumptions are correct, you won't notice any difference either way - unless you're running out of memory in anything you do
More memory will not give you performance (assuming you are not short of it and it uses your page file). So it depends on what you do with the system. If you like to have a game running on the back, and 300 tabs open in your web browser because you you are anti-bookmarks, then you may have a problem, deepening on the web browser and game. Faster RAM would be limited to the CPU bus speed. You'll need to to do the appropriate overclocking to get the full performance of your faster RAM.
And even then, the only place you're going to "notice" it is benchmarks. I'd suggest that if you have to ask the question, the answer is "neither".
Apologies for lack of detail, chaps, but in your wisdom I think you've answered the question regardless. However, to clarify - usage will indeed include editing in Photoshop and writing/sequencing music in Reason/Cubase/Ableton, but other assumptions are correct (games, surfing etc.). I'm not running out of memory in anything yet - the 8GB@1866 is installed now, but I happened across a spare kit of 8GB@1600 and was just interested to see whether or not slotting that in as well would be worth the downgrade in speed to the existing memory. I will set the pagefile up and although I do run hundreds of open tabs in Firefox (more as a to-do list, sadly!) I don't leave games running in the background or anything. What do you mean when referring to the bus speed as a limit and correct overclocking though? It's a 2500K @ 4.2/4.5GHz (depending on ambient temp) with bus left at 100 - did you mean overclocking the memory?
It's been true for a long time that memory speeds in excess of 1600MHz offer no perceptible improvement in performance, however memory quantity certainly does have an impact on certain software. I recently upgraded to 12GB of memory specifically for the Adobe suite (next step is 24GB or a complete system overhaul) and when working in Photoshop it's almost always at >10GB usage, which is what I allocated. To answer your question, yes, downgrading from 1866MHz to 1600MHz is well worth it if you're going to be doubling the quantity of your RAM. I've run memory at 2000MHz+ before and it's just a number that sells merchandise to punters... otherwise it's totally pointless IMO.
Let us know what RAM you've got. I won't be surprised to see both sets at 1866MHz with a small voltage bump.
As a 16GB user since 2009, I don't see any reason NOT to whack that spare 8GB in there. 1600 MHz vs 1866 MHz are tiny speed differences.
From what I remember SB's memory controller doesn't really gain anything from memory faster than 1600MT/s. In this scenario I would take more memory over faster memory. I currently run ~ 2400MT/s with my 4770S but didn't notice any difference when my MB's bios decided to revert it to 1600MT/s..
it's not quite correct that there are no noticeable improvement with faster ram (timing dependent of course) with Sandy & newer systems however it's very specific usage. So, as an example, once you've maxed out on the processor & o/cing & optimised the drives, faster memory can certainly improve video encoding/transcoding times by a few %age points - so it then becomes dependent on what the total time is. Well, if you've got an encoding task that takes, say, an hour & a half & you've other tasks that are pressing, 3-5 minutes saved would be more useful than if it only takes a couple of minutes. Similarly, many compression based tasks can gain from faster memory (assuming there's not a bottleneck with the drive(s)) - but again it's about if you have specific tasks that involve that are both significant time wise & are limiting your productivity significantly enough waiting for them to complete. That said, for the OP's stated usage then more memory @ 1600Mhz, not faster memory would be the better call - since, as LennyRhys rightly says, Adobe s/w (esp w. loads of plug-ins) tends to love more memory & less pagefile swapping would be a bonus... ...1600Mhz being the sweet spot for Sandy - though this isn't always the case for other chipsets.
Ever since I upgraded to 12GB I've been running my Xeon stock (2.66 or thereabouts)and my memory at 1333MHz 9-9-9-24-74-2T. That's definitely punishable by death for such high performance components; I just haven't had a chance to sit and OC my system for a while, and I'm aware that 12GB might be a little more laborious to stabilize. The memory can easily do 1600MHz 6-6-6-18 but I see no reason to run it at that other than for benching. It'd be interesting to sit down and do some rendering tests in Premiere Pro to see specifically what benefit I'd get running higher than 1600MHz (my ram can do 2000MHz 7-7-7 which would be interesting, but not sure the memory controller could handle that LOL).
intel rigs don't really benefit from going above 1600 - and IIRC SB are `limited` to 1333 so lower latency is king - CL6 @1333 would be great only AMD like high speed - the APU`s show a gain going from 1600>1866>2100
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/6 ^^ have a read
Just did a quick search to find the links (as it's years since i've seen the latter) & Anandtech's speed vs memory tests for r.l. usage with compression & encoding/transcoding are - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/3 ... ...whilst the slightly less complete tests for Sandy are - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3/5. Now, obviously these are for specific usages & it's only worthwhile *if* you've got a usage that will be materially effected both in terms of overall time & what else you need the machine for - as if everything's quick or you're running all of your encoding over night or whilst out for the day or whatever then it's not going matter vastly... ...so for most people, apart from being able to show off, it really doesn't matter hugely - but for some people it can. & theses encoding & compressing tasks aren't the only usages where memory speed can matter, they're just the two that i can remember off the top of my head as examples. Well, it's the same to a large extent with which SSD to buy or gaming at 1080p or whatever, where beyond a point any gains can be tiny unless you've got a usage that really needs something more - so, for a home user, most likely something that's bandwidth ltd with sequential r/ws or (if you're only gaming at 1080p) where a top end GPU can accelerate a task. Obviously it all depends on the rest of the kit - so it 'could' be that the CPU or GPU or drives are the limiting factor in your build rather than the memory... ...but it's about knowing that it could be a factor which can improve encoding times if that's what's important. You posted this whilst i was typing. What you've linked to is part of the same test that i did (2nd link) - however i'm not sure why you've chosen the gaming b/m as it's not what i was referring to at all, & at no point claimed that there'd be an improvement for gaming... indeed, i also said that, for the OP's stated usage then more memory at 1600Mhz would be the better call. That said, you may have been simply providing the OP with info as opposed to it being related to what i'd said - in which case obviously i've misunderstood the point you were trying to make.
I think that 1600 is ideal for SB and 1866 is recommended for newer platforms. Anything higher is not worth the extra cost.
