Ram speed; does it help games?

[KingOtaku]

I come here posing a question about ram (of course). Does the speed of ram (i.e. 1333mhz, 1600mhz) affect gameplay at all? Right now my ram is 667mhz, and though when I got the pc, it stated it was DDR3, I believe the speed put's at DDR2. If I were to upgrade to faster ram, would that increase frame rates or just load times?

 

[legendkiller]

The Frame Rates is based on VideoCard, the Load time is based on HDD/SSD... If you upgrade your memory from 667MHz(1333MHz Effective) to 800MHz(1600MHz Effective) you'll see the different... 1600MHz can run 99.99% of the programs anywhere and so it could at least gives like 1-5 FPS... I would recommend More Storage Over Speed for RAM because(Example) 1333MHz RAM with 16GB can be OC up to 1600MHz(Based on CPU OverClocked) and it's the same price as a 1600MHz 12GB... So, for now, I suggest keeping the 1333MHz RAM and OC your CPU until stable than OverClocked your RAM for superior performance... BTW Sometime, by changing timings on the memory, you can already OC your RAM by raising the Clock(Not BCLK) of the RAM from 133MHz to 1600MHz...

 

[KingOtaku]

Ah, well thats good then. I was mainly worried about it maybe holding me back in games, but if it's just a minor increase in fps, I don't care as much.
I'll probably upgrade to 8gb of DDR3 this year, anyways. That should last me for a while, right?

 

[legendkiller]

It should last for awhile but in the future, you'll need better GPU for superior games and also upgrade your computer... On laptops, Ram from 1066MHz to 1333MHz is a big different in performance but on PC/Desktop, it's a little different since we got a bigger MoBo(Chipset or northbridge), GPU, CPU, and most importantly the cooling...

 

[KingOtaku]

Well, right now I have a Phenom 2 X4 965 @3.8ghz(was at 4.0, but was crashing) and I should be getting a radeon 6950 by thursday, so I don't think that CPU or GPU are my biggest worries, right?

 

[jitpublisher]

RAM speed makes very little difference, your memory is running at 1333. What exactly is the problem you are looking to cure? Load times are reliant on Hard Drive speed.

 

[KingOtaku]

No, there aren't any problems. I just wanted to know if my ram was holding me back at all. I get a fine speed in games,I just was making sure I couldn't do better with better ram.