I have a set of 1866mhz ram (4gbx2, going to be 4gbx4 tomorrow, g.skill sniper) that up until now has been running at a nice, solid 1600mhz. I've just recently finished up my "total system OC" and this is the last step on my list. The question I have is which will be better to push, frequency or CAS? I do a lot of multi-tasking, for example I'll have 20 or so tabs open, with a video playing on a second screen and music in the background, be transferring files and doing some light gaming, at once. No crazy video encoding or any of that, just a bunch of little things. Given that I'll have 4 modules I don't think that "optimally" I should really boost the frequency above 1600mhz, since frequency deals with bandwidth, but I could be wrong. Any tips/thoughts? And yes, I know overclocking ram doesn't boost performance at all, but I would like to use the ram I payed for to its full potential (not running 1866 at 1600 or higher latency).
You wouldn't notice any difference either way. Sadly. ;-)
Fair enough!
Overclock it. Increasing frequency will increase bandwidth. You will have to play with timings accordingly. If you game on that computer, I've been finding more results backing the improvements of higher speed RAM in newer games. Well, mainly bf4 but still.
fast ram (>1600mhz) only really is worth the money on APUs, and even then you probably get a better bang for your buck if you go for a low to midrange dedicated gpu.
I find that the only real value of fast ram is to under-clock it, to get a ridiculously stable system, i run a 1866mhz stick @ 1600 mhz for that very reason on a small haswell home-server
From the newer games it looks like faster RAM is becoming relavent again. FSB overclocking seems dead, but might give that a try if I ever see a second hand set at a decent price. Battlefield 4 seems to love RAM to some extent. One of these days I will have to get my friend to record his framerate in game, since he has the same cpu/gpu. Only major difference between our PC's is that I have 8 more gigs then he does. Fairly certain he has the Z77 chipset, but I'll have to double check on that.
Been searching the internet for awhile to compare my fps. Usually get around 65-75 on multiplayer. From what I have seen, the higher I can push my RAM (at a stable clock speed) the more my framerates hold steady. Not many dips either direction once I get past 1866.
Hopefully more sites will look into this.*cough*Logan and/or Wendall *cough* My testing methods are admittedly crap.