RAM speed and framerate dips

[Charl15]

Good day,

In my system I have 16GB corsair DDR3 1600MHz CL9 memory (8GB x 2). At the moment I have it clocked at 1866Mhz. My question is will it help in games where I sometimes experience framerate dips (especially badly optimized games) to overclock the RAM to 2133 or 2400MHz. I am not looking to boost my max fps. I just want to see if I can increase the minimum fps I sometimes get.

Thank you

 

[PC Tailor]

Depends on the game. But generally, RAM speed makes minimal difference to game performance - here's a good article for battlefield 4 which is deemed to quite like higher speed RAM:

http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/battlefield-4-performance-analysis/9/

Overall, minor RAM speed changes doesn't matter that much when gaming. But you may see benefits in editing etc. And it also partially depends when running on GPU or Integrated too.

Edit: this is an article i found to be useful too: http://www.overclock.net/t/1487162/an-independent-study-does-the-speed-of-ram-directly-affect-fps-during-high-cpu-overhead-scenarios

 

[Charl15]

Depends on the game. But generally, RAM speed makes minimal difference to game performance - here's a good article for battlefield 4 which is deemed to quite like higher speed RAM:

http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/battlefield-4-performance-analysis/9/

Overall, minor RAM speed changes doesn't matter that much when gaming. But you may see benefits in editing etc. And it also partially depends when running on GPU or Integrated too.

Edit: this is an article i found to be useful too: http://www.overclock.net/t/1487162/an-independent-study-does-the-speed-of-ram-directly-affect-fps-during-high-cpu-overhead-scenarios

I read both the articles in your reply. Thank you I see that most benchmarks note a very small increase like you said. I might just give it a go myself to see what I get out of it. Even a 3-4fps increase will be worth it for me if it doesn't cause any system instability.

 

[atomicWAR]

Depends on the game. But generally, RAM speed makes minimal difference to game performance - here's a good article for battlefield 4 which is deemed to quite like higher speed RAM:

http://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/graphics/battlefield-4-performance-analysis/9/

Overall, minor RAM speed changes doesn't matter that much when gaming. But you may see benefits in editing etc. And it also partially depends when running on GPU or Integrated too.

Edit: this is an article i found to be useful too: http://www.overclock.net/t/1487162/an-independent-study-does-the-speed-of-ram-directly-affect-fps-during-high-cpu-overhead-scenarios

That has been the traditional belief in the past but the last few years ram speed has started to matter more. So I would have to disagree with being minimal. It isn't huge but a good jump in FPS is there (10%+). Many racing games have always scaled well with ram speed as have some flight sims. But now we are seeing FPS scale well with ram speed. Games like Fall Out 4, BF1 even GTA V. Check below

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-latency-gaming,3409-4.html Racing F1 and metro last light
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/477980-interesting-ram-observations-performance-increased/ Flight sims
http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2677-bf1-ram-benchmark-frequency-8gb-enough/page-2 BF1
https://forums.redflagdeals.com/faster-ram-makes-difference-games-2088424/ GTA V
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/779674-Ram-configuration-influence-in-GTA-V-performance GTA V
http://wccftech.com/fallout-4-performance-heavily-influenced-by-ram-speed-according-to-report/ Fallout 4
http://www.overclock.net/t/1366657/ddr3-1600-vs-2133-is-there-a-difference-in-game Mix of games Far cry 4, AVP,
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-latency-gaming,3409-6.html Skyrim

Point being the old belief that memory speed doesn't matter is not longer holding to be true. Many games, not all, do in fact benefit from faster ram speeds and more channels.

 

[atomicWAR]

The biggest benefit in my personal experience is higher minimums, less spikes and higher averages. I know different platforms create different/larger/smaller benefits. Ryzen gets a huge bump in game performance (I believe Kaby/skylake both do as well)...I personally use 4 channels of 2400mhz ram. When I have dropped the speeds or channels out of curiosity, I have almost always been sorry and happy to change them back.

 

[PC Tailor]

Agreed sir. Good points too. Just to clarify I am referring to DDR3 as that is what our thread starter uses. However DDR4 I would absolutely agree with you. I'm not suggesting that they make no difference at all, and you're absolutely right, newer games are becoming more reliant and utilising of various component specifications which in the past have made little difference.

So yes. I agree, and I also would still say in most cases it is minimal (not necessarily negligible however) difference. But as you also say, it does depend on the platform, newer platforms are utilising ram speed more effectively.

But points well made, just to clarify, for DDR3 I'm not suggesting there is no difference, but in many circumstances there is minimal, but I absolutely agree that DDR4 builds are beginning to show that the old thought of speed means nothing, is changing. Newer CPU and RAM technology has shown performance improvements with RAM speeds.

It was just as this gentleman has DDR3, I was referring to a DDR3 analysis.

I hope that sounds as sincere as it is intended, it can be hard to sound sincere when texting on a mobile!

So back to your thread on DDR3 i would still stay you may not get that much difference (not negligible) with smaller speed increases depending on the game (I.e. FALLOUT 4 does scale well with faster RAM), but on newer games and with DDR4 I would say otherwise, we are seeing a transition. Hope that is a little bit clearer? And thank you to the other poster for raising the point.

 

[Charl15]

The biggest benefit in my personal experience is higher minimums, less spikes and higher averages. I know different platforms create different/larger/smaller benefits. Ryzen gets a huge bump in game performance (I believe Kaby/skylake both do as well)...I personally use 4 channels of 2400mhz ram. When I have dropped the speeds or channels out of curiosity, I have almost always been sorry and happy to change them back.

That higher minimum's is exactly what I am looking for. Especially in games like GTA V when driving at high speed the frames do drop quite a bit which I don't like. I am just not very knowledgeable when it comes to overclocking memory. I'll have to spend some time to do some research before I do it myself.

 

[Charl15]

Like I said above I am not an expert when it comes to memory overclocking. Do you guys perhaps know of good articles or tips which I could use to help me with this.

TIA

 

[PC Tailor]

Like I said above I am not an expert when it comes to memory overclocking. Do you guys perhaps know of good articles or tips which I could use to help me with this.

TIA

Tom's Hardware do their own good guide:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ram-overclocking-guide,review-33633.html

 

[atomicWAR]

To PC Tailor

Thanks that was a kind post and did indeed sound sincere, even from a mobile lol! One thing though I am using DDR3 myself and do see this scaling as well. At DDR3 1600 - DDR3 2400 the jump is roughly 10-15% depending on the title. The big jump is hitting DDR3 2133 at which point things start to scale less linearly at which point you're right DDR4 makes a bigger difference.