[SOLVED] Can RAM speed affect performance in terms of FPS

[Psycho381]

4 years ago I bought 3 ram sticks when I knew nothing about PCs in general (each 16gb 2133Mhz).
And now I know that I absolutely don't need 48 GB of ram memory, but at the time, I got 3 of them at the price of 2 which seemed like a good deal.
However, I had no clue that 2133Mhz is very low. Will this Ram speed affect my FPS in modern games, and if so, by how much?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nobody is going to be able to give you any hard numbers in terms of "how much" because it's going to vary from game to game, with games that are particularly memory intensive having a more appreciable drop in performance than games that aren't as memory intensive.

In general though, there are also simply too many other factors involved, such as your CPU model, motherboard model (Yes, the model of a motherboard CAN have an effect on performance from model to model), the specific timings of the memory kit (Two kits that are both running at the same speed but having different timings can have anything from mildly to wildly different performance characteristics) and even the VRM configuration, which can ALL affect memory and overall system performance.

What are your full hardware specifications including the model numbers of all core hardware. CPU, motherboard, memory kit, exact power supply model, graphics card, storage devices, Windows version, etc.?

 

[hotaru.hino]

The answer is it depends. It depends on the hardware configuration. It depends on the software running. But ultimately it depends. There's no clear answer to this question.

 

[Psycho381]

What are your full hardware specifications including the model numbers of all core hardware. CPU, motherboard, memory kit, exact power supply model, graphics card, storage devices, Windows version, etc.?

Hey, Thank you for the reply!

After reading your comment I started researching more this topic, and later watched bunch of benchmarks between 2133mhz and 3600mhz regarding in game performance. And fps difference was 10-20 depending on a game ( I always thought it would be few fps difference, which still is but in very few games) . So I decided to upgrade my ram

But anyways, here is my build, if you want to pint something out regarding this topic, in case I missed smth

Cpu: i7 8700k cpu info

Gpu: MSI 1070ti data sheet, next week upgrading to rx 6700xt info (I am aware of the relatively light bottleneck between cpu and gpu)

Motherboard: MSI Z370 A PRO Data sheet

PSU: DeepCool DA700 Plus Bronze / 700w info

Planing to upgrade to this ram amazon page , what do you think about the price? Edit: however, my cpu supports 2666mhz, what happens if I use 3200

Windows 10 PRO

 

[Darkbreeze]

That kit will likely work fine, as Intel generally has really broad support for a wide range of kits and ICs. Might consider a few alternative options however.

For one, you could double your memory capacity to 32GB for 25 dollars more using very good G.Skill Ripjaws sticks.

PCPartPicker Part List

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL19 Memory ($74.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $74.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-12 13:55 EDT-0400

But it may be you don't need or want the additional capacity, which is totally your call.


You could also go with what I believe to be a better QUALITY memory kit than that Vengeance kit, which we know Corsair often uses very inexpensive components and ICs on to maximize profit. In most cases that's not a deal breaker, but it does affect compatibility in some cases and that IS occasionally a problem especially on Ryzen systems but sometimes on Intel platforms as well. This is also less expensive than the kit you were ordering. And, if you prefer to order through Amazon, you can still order this kit through them as well for about two bucks more than through Newegg, which is still less expensive than the Vengeance kit.

PCPartPicker Part List

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($43.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $43.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-12 13:56 EDT-0400


However, if we are being honest with each other I think the component you MOST ought to look at upgrading to something better is your power supply. That Deepcool DA700 was released in 2016 which was 7 years ago. Even if you bought it 5 years ago, which would probably be right at the edge of when it would have still been in manufacturing if we stretch things a little bit, you'd be WELL PAST it's 3 year warranty and unlike a lot of other products when a manufacturer feels a power supply is only built well enough to trust for 3 years, or 5 years, or 10 years, I am not going to be the one to argue with them. They know their own product better than I do especially when the only review out there for that product that is even remotely trustworthy is a Russian based review, although that IS based on a teardown and appropriate testing.

That unit was VERY "mediocre" in testing. And a very mediocre power supply that has already exceeded it's warranty by a fair margin PLUS is based on a platform that is 7 years old, is not a power supply I would want to continue using with my relatively expensive hardware ESPECIALLY if I was getting ready to buy a brand new graphics card. It's an unnecessary risk, and one that might just bite you in the behind. Sure, you could be fortunate enough to not have any problems, for a while, but honestly it's an investment in the rest of your hardware that anybody ought to be happy to make if they give the slightest care for that hardware. Considering the power supply is literally about the only component that every single other component relies on AND is about the only component that can instantly take out every single other component, it really IS sort of important.

 

[Psycho381]

That unit was VERY "mediocre" in testing. And a very mediocre power supply that has already exceeded it's warranty by a fair margin PLUS is based on a platform that is 7 years old, is not a power supply I would want to continue using with my relatively expensive hardware ESPECIALLY if I was getting ready to buy a brand new graphics card. It's an unnecessary risk, and one that might just bite you in the behind. Sure, you could be fortunate enough to not have any problems, for a while, but honestly it's an investment in the rest of your hardware that anybody ought to be happy to make if they give the slightest care for that hardware. Considering the power supply is literally about the only component that every single other component relies on AND is about the only component that can instantly take out every single other component, it really IS sort of important.

Yeah you are probably right about the power supply, I will upgrade it as soon as I get a chance, currently on a tight budget. do you have any recommendation for 700w power supply. ( 700w should be enough right)?

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, a really GOOD quality 650w unit is probably enough for the 6700 XT, however, both the last Gen cards and this Gen cards from both AMD and Nvidia tend to have much more frequent transient spikes that the majority of past generations, and while those spikes might only last milliseconds that can be enough to trigger protections on some units, even very good ones, if it happens to be a unit where the protection isn't tuned properly or is extremely low. So, as I say, you can get away with a REALLY GOOD 650w unit but I'd still recommend looking at a decent 750w unit. Anything from 650 to 750w is probably fine but it always sucks to buy something, as I've seen a lot of people do, and then discover that you're getting shut downs from transient spikes (Also now being called "Power excursions" in the ATX 3.0 specification) triggering protections.

And the cost difference is generally not that much, in fact, in some cases, less, since the 750w models tend to move in higher numbers.

At 650w this is probably about the best option for the least price that is out there right now, and keep in mind, like everything else the price of power supplies is not looking like it is going to normalize back to standards we became used to for quite some time there prior to Covid and the supply chain issues.

PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 PE 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $89.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-12 18:22 EDT-0400


This, would be a MUCH better option IMO.

PCPartPicker Part List

Power Supply: Corsair RM750x (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $119.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-03-12 18:23 EDT-0400

There are other, non modular Bronze options out there, but to be honest any of them that are even remotely worth entertaining are 90 bucks just like the much better GF-1 I listed above so they are pointless to even look at.

 

[Kona45primo]

Keep in mind a lower CL value will also increase performance. For example a 3200mhz CL14 kit will be comparable to a 3600mhz CL16 kit.

 

[Bob.B]

Yeah you are probably right about the power supply, I will upgrade it as soon as I get a chance, currently on a tight budget. do you have any recommendation for 700w power supply. ( 700w should be enough right)?

Psu.....in your link for the gpu expand the requirements section.

Looks like the recco is 750w.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually it says minimum recommended is 650w, and THEN it says they "recommend" an XFX 750w, which is funny because everything XFX is putting out in terms of power supplies these days is pretty much junk.

 

[jasonf2]

In most consumer applications going above 32GB of RAM will do little or nothing for improving performance. With that being said in most work loads 16GB is a very acceptable number. With that being said the type and configuration of RAM being used to get to that 32GB number can have a very large impact on performance.

The first and biggest mistake people make is stick count. DDR and DIMM stand for Dual Data Rate and Dual Inline Memory Module respectively. If you notice anything here they both start with Dual. While it works in single and odd stick configurations you get the best performance out of even pairs. Running odd numbers half's the bandwidth on at least one stick. So from a performance standpoint your machine would probably have ran faster with two at 32 than 3 at 48.

The second mistake people make is the all magical advertised frequency number. When we look at overall performance RAM is all about latency, or how little time we have to wait for it, not just frequency. Without going into a long bit on overclocking RAM, which Tom's has already done an excellent job of doing (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ram-overclocking-guide,4693.html) RAM comes from the factory with default settings on the SPD (Serial Presence Detect not short for speed). Those default settings are known stable settings. Default SPD settings are going to be much slower than the advertised frequency on the packaging. That advertised clock on the packaging is a number that was able to be made on a machine in a lab somewhere with hardware that you more than likely don't have. So for the average person your best bet to get even close to that number is use XMP (eXtreme Memory Profile) which is a replacement profile provided in the chip over default that increases frequency. This is a technical overclock and while they usually work, they don't always work especially with AMD hardware. When RAM destabilizes (even a little bit) a person learns what freezing and the acronym BSOD stands for. If the OS is installed in this state the OS will more than likely be corrupted and even if the RAM is stabilized afterwards the machine will never be right. It is for this reason that I never install an OS with any overclocks set.

So what do those timings do and why do they matter? There is a secret with RAM speeds hidden in plain sight that is akin to the man behind the curtain in the wizard of oz. While generational RAM bus bandwidth and clock speed has increased dramatically (DDR1 to DDR5) the underlying, on the silicon technology, hasn't seen an overall latency reduction since the split between DDR2 and DDR3. In fact from DDR3 to DDR5 overall latency has actually increased a little bit overall. So while bandwidth and clock frequency has, by the selling numbers, improved the actual latency (or delay) to read and write to RAM modules hasn't. This is why RAM timings are so important. The best RAM has the lowest timings and this makes a pretty huge difference in performance. ( https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-memory-ram-frequency-timings,6328.html) Read this link if you really want some understanding.

 

[Bob.B]

Actually it says minimum recommended is 650w, and THEN it says they "recommend" an XFX 750w, which is funny because everything XFX is putting out in terms of power supplies these days is pretty much junk.

Yup......replace XFX with 'quality'.

 

[logainofhades]

So, a really GOOD quality 650w unit is probably enough for the 6700 XT

It definitely is. I am using a Seasonic built Fractal Ion 650w gold sfx, in my R7 5800x, RX 6800 rig.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Read this link if you really want some understanding.

You can't possibly be serious? Some "understanding"? That's like, the most absolutely generic memory article, if you want to call it an article, I've ever read outside of the blurbs of basic horsepucky you see on memory manufacturers generic marketing pages. I don't mean to direct that at you, and maybe you actually think that's an informative article or guide, but it's not.

You want some actual understanding of advanced memory concepts, read these.

Comprehensive Memory Overclocking Guide

www.overclock.net

https://www.hisevilness.com/articles/technology/overclocking-guide-for-ddr4-ram.html?showall=1

 

[jasonf2]

You can't possibly be serious? Some "understanding"? That's like, the most absolutely generic memory article, if you want to call it an article, I've ever read outside of the blurbs of basic horsepucky you see on memory manufacturers generic marketing pages. I don't mean to direct that at you, and maybe you actually think that's an informative article or guide, but it's not.

You want some actual understanding of advanced memory concepts, read these.

Comprehensive Memory Overclocking Guide

www.overclock.net

https://www.hisevilness.com/articles/technology/overclocking-guide-for-ddr4-ram.html?showall=1

Those are both toms hardware articles. Both are pretty generic, but yes reading them at least gives a generic understanding of how the memory clock cycle and latency are intertwined on a beginner level. I don't really expect someone to become an expert over clocker from either of them, but the end user here is asking questions that make it pretty obvious that they need somewhere to start.

Sorry for offending.

 

[Darkbreeze]

There's no offense involved. None at all.

However, if you're going to link to Tom's hardware guides that are related to memory, especially if you're looking to offer basic to intermediate level information, you'd be a lot better served by linking to ones written by somebody who ACTUALY knew what he was talking about when it comes to memory and used to be the wealth of information that all these others tried to draw from, not to mention being one of the top resources for the G.Skill forum before we lost him.

Anything written by Jim Reece / Tradesman1 is information that is going to be easily digested by the layman almost all the time, and is going to be on point factually.

Tradesman1 memory articles on Tom's hardware

 

[Psycho381]

Thank you for the articles and help. I have an additional question.

As far as I know my motherboard supports XMP, but when go in the bios it says XMP not supported, could that be because my current RAM does not support XMP? ( The one I am planning to buy does support XMP )

If that is the case, when I put new RAM, the XMP will be supported?

If that does not resolve the issue, and issue is something else, what would be the difference between using XMP, and me manually setting RAM ( speed, timing, voltage) based on the information on the sticker at the back of ram stick?

 

[kerberos_20]

After reading your comment I started researching more this topic, and later watched bunch of benchmarks between 2133mhz and 3600mhz regarding in game performance. And fps difference was 10-20 depending on a game ( I always thought it would be few fps difference, which still is but in very few games) . So I decided to upgrade my ram

you can watch 10 different videos with all of them having 3600MHz sticks and all of them will have different performance

you can get more fps with better ram, but only if your bottleneck is CPU, if GPU cant keep up, there shouldnt be any improvement visible (maybe just on minimum fps side/less stuttering)

most memory modules can be manualy overclocked, what you buy marketed as 3600mhz is factory overclocked ram

as far as memory overclocking goes, it should improve gaming FPS, but not because of higher ram frequency, but because of cpu interconnect (uncore/infinity fabric) it overclocks alongside with ram frequency and that is main factor why higher clocked ram gives more fps, as cpu cores gets lower latencies from interconnect

ram frequency itself in games is mostly pointless, as most games preload stuffs before game even starts, so it may affect game loading time
openworld games might be different story as they keep updating scene as you walk around, but ultimately bottleneck there is storage (ssd/hdd), ram bandwith once again doesn matter that much, because theres also pcie between gpu and ram which creates another bottleneck to some extent, but most games can hide it pretty well

lower ram latencies and multiple available memory banks is mostly what matters in games, but if game has small code which fits in CPU cache, then ram doesnt really matter either

as mentioned above it depends on how is game coded, whether you need cpu with bigger cache or lower ram latency

but tbh you get more fps when you replace gpu then from ram

but if you need new faster ram, then go for dual ranked as they give more fps than single rank, while price should be similar

 

[Endre]

4 years ago I bought 3 ram sticks when I knew nothing about PCs in general (each 16gb 2133Mhz).
And now I know that I absolutely don't need 48 GB of ram memory, but at the time, I got 3 of them at the price of 2 which seemed like a good deal.
However, I had no clue that 2133Mhz is very low. Will this Ram speed affect my FPS in modern games, and if so, by how much?

Hello!

A good practice is to buy RAM that is, at least, as fast as your CPU supports.
Always check the QVL (qualified vendor list) of your motherboard.

Also, buying 3 modules was a non-optimal choice, since one of those modules can't run in dual-channel mode.
You need to buy either 2, or 4 DIMMs (RAM modules) in order to run them as they were meant to.
2 DIMMs on a board with 4 slots should be inserted (in most cases) in slots #2 + #4.

I hope this helps.

 

[Psycho381]

you can get more fps with better ram, but only if your bottleneck is CPU, if GPU cant keep up, there shouldnt be any improvement visible (maybe just on minimum fps side/less stuttering)

Well, CPU i7 8700k, GPU Rx 6700xt, so cpu is somewhat weaker, 10-15% bottleneck

what do you think of this ram? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095HTC9S6/ref=ewc_pr_img_1?smid=A25SITGFW0OQJA&psc=1

And also I heard, along with setting ram manually ( speed, timing, voltage), I should make some changes for the cpu in the bios, like voltage or smth like that, can you tell me something about it, cause I have no clue what to do regarding cpu when manually setting ram performance

 

[Psycho381]

Hello!

A good practice is to buy RAM that is, at least, as fast as your CPU supports.
Always check the QVL (qualified vendor list) of your motherboard.

Also, buying 3 modules was a non-optimal choice, since one of those modules can't run in dual-channel mode.
You need to buy either 2, or 4 DIMMs (RAM modules) in order to run them as they were meant to.
2 DIMMs on a board with 4 slots should be inserted (in most cases) in slots #2 + #4.

I hope this helps.

I know, but got it at a good deal, afterwards I learned a lesson, and took one out and had dual channel ram (2x16gb). cpu i7 8700k supports 2666, my motherboard up to 4000mhz oc , however now I want to see if upgrading to 3200mhz cl16 (2x16gb) is worth it regarding in game performance, since I saw over 10 benchmarks improving fps from 10 to 20 depending on a game, unfortunatelly had no luck finding benchmark with my cpu being used.

 

[kerberos_20]

I know, but got it at a good deal, afterwards I learned a lesson, and took one out and had dual channel ram (2x16gb). cpu i7 8700k supports 2666, my motherboard up to 4000mhz oc , however now I want to see if upgrading to 3200mhz cl16 (2x16gb) is worth it regarding in game performance, since I saw over 10 benchmarks improving fps from 10 to 20 depending on a game, unfortunatelly had no luck finding benchmark with my cpu being used.

if you running 2133MHz jedec and you switch to 3200 cl16 on xmp profile, than you should see diference not even in games but like everywhere lol

 

[SkyNetRising]

And also I heard, along with setting ram manually ( speed, timing, voltage), I should make some changes for the cpu in the bios, like voltage or smth like that,
can you tell me something about it, cause I have no clue what to do regarding cpu when manually setting ram performance

Generally - you only have to enable XMP, load XMP profile and save settings.

More fiddling becomes necessary, if you have some weird ram configuration like 3 ram modules or multiple ram kits mixed together.

 

[Psycho381]

Generally - you only have to enable XMP, load XMP profile and save settings.

More fiddling becomes necessary, if you have some weird ram configuration like 3 ram modules or multiple ram kits mixed together.

As far as I know my motherboard supports XMP, but when go in the bios it says XMP not supported, could that be because my current RAM does not support XMP? ( The one I am planning to buy does support XMP )

If that is the case, when I put new RAM, the XMP will be supported?

If that does not resolve the issue, and issue is something else, what would be the difference between using XMP, and me manually setting RAM ( speed, timing, voltage) based on the information on the sticker at the back of ram stick?

 

[kerberos_20]

Generally - you only have to enable XMP, load XMP profile and save settings.

More fiddling becomes necessary, if you have some weird ram configuration like 3 ram modules or multiple ram kits mixed together.

xmp is kinda slow in my case 🙂 trfc 560 lulz