Is more GB or more MHz better?

[Deathwing1983]

Hi, I'm going to buy a new gaming rig to replace the existing one which went up in flames yesterday (it was very impressive and the sight of it almost made up for the fact it went up in flames). I have various memory upgrade options as the mobo handles 12 Gb up to 1800 MHz. The standard option is 3 x 2Gb at 1333 MHz. It doesn't say the manufacturer.

I have yet to find out about cost, but would I see greater improvement in performance increasing the RAM from 6Gb to 12Gb, or by increasing the RAM from 1333MHz to 1600/1800 MHz?

Many thanks!

 

[Blckhaze]

For gaming, you'd gain a little performance in increasing the ram mhz. I said gain, not see... You'll see nothing unless you're running a FPS recorder because the gain from 1066 to 1600 is pretty much humanly undetectable.

12gb over 6gb won't help anything. 4-6gb is perfect for gaming, if even that much.

You're main focus should be graphics card and processor and if needed, a power supply, if the system already has 1066mhz or higher ram.

 

[Deathwing1983]

Thank you, yes the system comes with gtx 480 and an Intel i7 920 CPU - it's the iReign by Novatech. I'll enquire as to MHz upgrade on the RAM then and if it's not much I'll go for it, otherwise I'll stick with the standard rig.

 

[gamerk316]

Up to a certain point, increasing the size of memory avaliable will be far more important then the speed the RAM runs at (within reason, of course). For modern PC's, that limit is somewhere between 4-8GB for what I call "normal use" gaming machines. As long as you aren't doing anything too memory intensive, I'd go for either 6/8GB RAM (depending on the rest of your setup).

8GB might be a bit overkill, but given the price of RAM these days...

 

[Deathwing1983]

I'd like it to run the latest games on the highest-quality settings for the next 3 years, and still be a good runner for another 3 years after that till I replace it. Given that, should I have the 12 Gb RAM or is 6 Gb sufficient?

 

[JoshBaity]

6gb is more than sufficient in ddr3 for any of the latest games... i think most require 3gb. your OS also has a lot to do with what's accessible in RAM. 32 bit OS' restrict it to about 8, whereas 64 bit allows for up to 16. Vista and windows 7 both hog up about 1ghz of that.
the card and cpu are top of the line right now, so you should be just fine for 3 years. That card is dirx 11.1 compatable, and there's no game that's anywhere near that yet.

 

[Deathwing1983]

Okies shall stick with the plan - standard 6Gb unless they offer me a really cheap deal on an upgrade. Thanks!