I7 6700k skylake and RAM (DDR4) - possible bottleneck?

[Gustavo do Valle]

Hi! In this site (https://communities.intel.com/message/424767#424767), an employee of Intel Corporation said that it is recommended to use DDR4 2133 RAM (maximum) with i7 6700k Skylake processor. But I think there are lots of persons that uses memory sticks of higher frequencies with this processor. I`m afraid that if I use DDR4 2133 RAM, I can create a bottleneck... I will use my computer for games, and my GPU is a Zotac GTX 1080 AMP EXTREME, with a MoBo GA-Z170X-Gaming 7. I`d like to hear your thoughts about this...

 

[amtseung]

RAM speed can't really bottleneck anything, unless you're attempting to run a ramdisk, run your system as a 24x7x365 render farm, or do a lot of work in 3d modeling. For gaming, as long as you have enough quantity of ram, speed is a marginal increase to performance at best. With DDR3, I struggled to find a tangible difference in performance whether I ran my ram at 1066mhz or 2400mhz. CAS latency is more important than raw speed when it comes to RAM performance anyway.

 

[Isokolon]

RAM frequency has next to none impact on gaming performance.
Skylake is only specified for 2133 MHz RAM, everything above is an overclock technically
while higher clocked RAM can help with some tasks, for gaming it pretty much makes no difference

furthermore, unless you need the Creative Sound Chip, save some money and go for the Gaming 5 or Gaming 6 board....

 

[k1114]

Intel will only officially suggest the supported stock max speed, not oc.

 

[Vic 40]

The people at Digital Foundry seem to disagree with what's said above. There they state that faster ram can improve gaming,although few games will truly benefit from it now it seems that more will in times coming.
I would really get a minimum of 2666mhz ram with a system like that,this would most likely run without issues on the right XMP profile.
Looking at what the people at Digital Foundry found out is that for gaming 3000mhz seemed to be the sweet spot,but this might need an overclock of the cpu to run stable.
Like said only few games will take advantage of the faster ram,but i would go for it anyway.
One of their vids,
https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiv2_yg0L7PAhVBOhQKHSAOA9QQtwIIHzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEr_Fuz54U0Y&usg=AFQjCNHo4Pc8OE_eIyJBkdie2AhqrRxJTw
not always huge amounts of better fps,but imo worth getting faster ram since often not that much more expensive.

 

[Achaios]

The people at Digital Foundry seem to disagree with what's said above. There they state that faster ram can improve gaming,although few games will truly benefit from it now it seems that more will in times coming.
I would really get a minimum of 2666mhz ram with a system like that,this would most likely run without issues on the right XMP profile.
Looking at what the people at Digital Foundry found out is that for gaming 3000mhz seemed to be the sweet spot,but this might need an overclock of the cpu to run stable.
Like said only few games will take advantage of the faster ram,but i would go for it anyway.
One of their vids,
https://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiv2_yg0L7PAhVBOhQKHSAOA9QQtwIIHzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEr_Fuz54U0Y&usg=AFQjCNHo4Pc8OE_eIyJBkdie2AhqrRxJTw
not always huge amounts of better fps,but imo worth getting faster ram since often not that much more expensive.

Digit..who?

Anandtech has proved there is no benefit to gaming from faster RAM as explained in the article below:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell