1600 GHz or 1866 GHz RAM for overclocking?

Well obviously 1866 GHz RAM is better, but does one help in Overclocking over the other? The reason I ask that is because someone on a different post of mine said that, I didn't know if that was true or not. So...

Will I get higher overclocks with 1866 GHz over 1600 GHz?

I never have much luck when it comes to overclocking ram.

I always end up with the runts of the litter (both 1600 AND 1866) that wont budge past their set values without either failing a mem test or just getting me to the bad overclock boot screen :(.

I get the sneaking suspicion that most of the good stuff gets properly allocated in the binning process and not much slips through.. so the days of buying things and overclocking them for 'free' performance boost are drawing to an end as manufacturers have identified us as a market and are now factory overclocking and selling at a premium.

this time around I went out and bought some 2133mhz kingston beast ram.

semi related..

did a couple of tests of 1600mhz (9-9-24) vs 2133mhz (11-12-32)

resident evil bench (gives scores from fps, other than ram settings nothing else was changed on the system)

1600mhz

test1 10946

test2 10973

test3 10978

average 10965

2133mhz

test1 11550

test2 11511

test3 11589

average 11550

Passmark

1600

Memory score: 1421

2133

Memory score: 1491

The ram that is most likely to overclock better are the sorted ICs they use for low latency sku's as they can run faster at 7,8,8,24 with 1600 MHz vs a normal "cheapy" sku 11,11,11,30 1600 MHz. Latency can tell you a lot about a specific set of RAM as to how well it will perform overclocked with manually set timings. Typically lower latency and overall timing ram, is generally more likely to overclock when you start loosening up those ram timings while overclocking the ICs.

On most sets you can usually go up to the next speed no problem, but any higher requires time to find those stable timings.

I agree but quite frankly I think RAM manufacturers have gotten lax on their JEDEC programming. The Mushkin Blackline I have has an XMP profile for 2400 MHz but this system will only run it at 2133MHz and the next closest JEDEC timing they have programmed is 1600 MHz at 11,11,11,30, and 41. If you ask me that's a lazy bag of bullshit and I had to do rigorous testing to get the manually set timings of 11,11,11,33,44, 3.9ms refresh rate, and 1T command rate at 2133 MHz. A lot of work just to get factory overclocked RAM underclocked to work with a system.

overclocking the cpu requires more cpu throughput at a higher frequency to stabilize which is why faster ram is important for overclocking.

Yes, exactly why I purchased the 2400 MHz ram in the first place, even at 4670 MHz on my FX-8350 if I yank 2 out of the 4 slots of RAM it still will not run at 2400 MHz. I think this has more to do with the ram i purchased not being on the QVL for this motherboard, none-the-less I'm happy with my results for now.

Man thats some fast RAM 1866Ghz thats crasy :P

even if the oc is succesful,

between 1866 and 1600 you still might have some performance gains (a whopping 3% or so in practical use), but anything higher is just (very) good for video editing, and benchmark scores.

But will it help for overclocks? If im not mistaken lower ram speeds help with overclocks. :s

if the cpu/mboard operates at lower frequencies then tighter timings and lower frequencies is your only choice. not every processor can use extreme memory operating at high frequencies like a 3770k.

Traditionally, before the industry started using internal memory controllers, If you didn't overclock your ram or buy overclocked ram your overclocks with your CPU would be very limited due to the amount of bandwidth your ram could output. With the introduction of internal memory controllers, the industry shanked itself in the side with a knife to cause a deliberate design flaw to extend the life of DDR2 and DDR3. Because the memory controllers were part of the CPU it ment that CPU manufacturers could limit the RAM speeds you would be able to achieve with your RAM. This is due to the amount of heat output generated from both the CPU and Memory controller on the CPU die.

I wanted to share this information with anybody who hasn't ever overclocked either a Socket mPGA478 or an old Socket LGA775. I experimented with those before I moved on to new computer components to get a rough understanding of overclocking and its complexities.

I was able to get a Pentium4 3.4 GHz to 4.06GHz before the 4+1 power phase 2200 micro farad capacitors decided to implode on the Asus motherboard I was using at the time.