Memory DDR3 question!

Hey!

I'm putting together a bit of a gaming PC and am looking for some advice on memory! Currently im looking at different motherboards and was wondering whether it was worth the extra money to get a motherboard that supports DDR3 memory above 1600?? This might be a no brainer question but it seems that most gaming machines that i have seen on the market only use DDR3 1600??

Any help would be great!

SM

 

I think 1600mhz is more than enough and anything above is expensive. Just had a quick look at scan and I think most mobos will have OC support above 1600mhz....

 

+1 1600MHz is more than enough. I have a 2000MHz kit which I run below 1600MHz daily, and my PC still flies through games effortlessly.

RAM is more about quantity than speed, to a point.

 

LennyRhys is correct, DDR3 is now so fast that it has become much more about the amount you have rather than the speed of it. Anything over 1600mhz is "premium" for those wanting to reach the highest clocks or just wanting to have the fastest ram they can buy.

 

Another vote here for DDR3-1600 being just fine. Faster memory can make a difference in certain things like intensive archiving operations, but I've seen several articles that show memory above this speed makes almost no difference at all to gaming performance.

 

Agreed, above 1600 you probably won't notice any real world difference unless you bench or edit. 8GB 1600 seems to be the sweet spot right now and that's what I'm rockin'.

 

every now and then there is an article about memory speed and latency and system performance, benchmarks and all that jazz. And to my memory in recent years, the biggest gain in gaming I have seen and remembered - being the key word - is 2fps. So I wouldn't worry.

I just buy what fits for reasonable cash that isn't bottom of the run quality wise with the mind that it was cheap to buy, cheap to replace.

 

However usually better motherboards support higher than 1600mhz for those who need it.

 

There was a recent anandtech article that proved that anything above ddr3 1600 has negligible gains.

I run DDR3 1333 and I noticed a better difference increasing from 4 to 12GB than 1333 to 1600 (i had4GB of 1600 prior to the 8GB of 1333).

 

The one and only use for anything more than 1333CL7/1600CL9 is the IGP in Llano (A8 3850). In any other use case, you can't tell the difference.

 

Guys as usual excellent feedback! just what i needed, have now scaled it down to two options either a Asus P8P67 or MSI P67A GD53!

Thanks