[SOLVED] RAM speed

[plissk]

I currently have 2x16GB of 3000MHz DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX C15 (CMK32GX4M2B3000C15, 15-17-17-35) which I run at 3000MHz using XMP. How much improvement in memory performance could I expect to get with an Intel based Z370 motherboard for heavy desktop work and leisure use (not gaming) if I upgraded to one of the better 3600MHz kits with tight timings? TIA.

Edit: Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7, i7-8700K CPU, RX570 G4 GPU & Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSDs.
e.g. was considering Crucial Ballistix 3600 with 16-18-18-38

 

[PC Tailor]

More specifically what workstation work are we referring to?
Gaming would have some gains but for the cost it would be negligible.

In some workstation based environments, it could 1 way or the other really. But usually above 3000, the cost to performance lowers much more. In most cases you probably won't notice much difference.

 

[lvt]

Hard to say without running some tests.

Anyway if it's a home/office machine, why bother with upgading the RAM?

 

[thx1138v2]

It's impossible to say without having the exact motherboard and CPU models. Three thing are needed for memory speed: CPU (memory controller), motherboard, and the modules used. All 3 must support the higher speed. But that doesn't guarantee you will get that speed if it's considered an overclocked speed. Check the spec sheets for all 3 items.

That said, I doubt that the speed increase would be noticeable in anything other that benchmark testing. There's a lot more going on than just memory performance.

 

[jasonf2]

RAM overclocks can be pretty misleading. You really need to compare your actual timings. While you may find your Mhz number to be more impressive the read/write delays necessary to hold stability often heavily offset and in some cases completely negate any performance gains.

 

[plissk]

It's impossible to say without having the exact motherboard and CPU models.

It's a Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 motherboard with i7-8700K CPU, RX570 G4 GPU and Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSDs. I work from home so do everything on this desktop, boring stuff, work and watch movies etc. I just pointed out I'm not gaming so I'm not chasing FPS just after a boost in performance. Other things I was considering was swapping the CPU out for an i7-9700K which is marginally better I think, otherwise maybe I might be better off saving my money for a motherboard upgrade further down the line. However if I can get a noticeable boost from different RAM it might not cost that much if I sell the old RAM.

 

[thx1138v2]

It's a Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7 motherboard with i7-8700K CPU, RX570 G4 GPU and Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSDs. I work from home so do everything on this desktop, boring stuff, work and watch movies etc. I just pointed out I'm not gaming so I'm not chasing FPS just after a boost in performance. Other things I was considering was swapping the CPU out for an i7-9700K which is marginally better I think, otherwise maybe I might be better off saving my money for a motherboard upgrade further down the line. However if I can get a noticeable boost from different RAM it might not cost that much if I sell the old RAM.

600MHz isn't going to be very noticeable, if at all, in a real world scenario,

 

[Zerk2012]

I currently have 2x16GB of 3000MHz DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX C15 (CMK32GX4M2B3000C15, 15-17-17-35) which I run at 3000MHz using XMP. How much improvement in memory performance could I expect to get with an Intel based Z370 motherboard for heavy desktop work and leisure use (not gaming) if I upgraded to one of the better 3600MHz kits with tight timings? TIA.

Edit: Gigabyte Z370 Gaming 7, i7-8700K CPU, RX570 G4 GPU & Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB SSDs.
e.g. was considering Crucial Ballistix 3600 with 16-18-18-38

I don't think the difference would be enough to justify spending the money on the new memory.

I would try to overclock the memory you have to 3466 or so by adding 0.05 volts.

 

[egda23]

What type of "heavy desktop work" do you actually do, in order to bring this machine on its knees ?
When you look in Task manager while working, what is saturated ? The CPU, RAM, GPU ?
If working online could it actually be your Internet connection ?

 

[plissk]

What type of "heavy desktop work" do you actually do, in order to bring this machine on its knees ?
When you look in Task manager while working, what is saturated ? The CPU, RAM, GPU ?
If working online could it actually be your Internet connection ?

Well I do web development and sometimes edit images but it only becomes 'heavy' at times. I have looked at the system performance and it's got enough memory for the large part, 32GB, it usually uses about 10-12GB, one time I saw it spike up to 29GB, not sure why. I don't think you can identify a ram bottleneck in speed terms by looking at ram capacity usage stats. I just figured faster RAM might help improve performance, but looking at the comparisons it doesn't seem there is an optimal ram speed for everything anyway, but 3200 seems to be the sweet spot for most things. I notice in all the ram comparisons, they all use G-Skill and use C14 RAM which sounds like it would be nice to have but the prices are crazy.

 

[egda23]

Well I do web development and sometimes edit images but it only becomes 'heavy' at times. I have looked at the system performance and it's got enough memory for the large part, 32GB, it usually uses about 10-12GB, one time I saw it spike up to 29GB, not sure why. I don't think Cby looking at ram capacity usage stats. I just figured faster RAM might help improve performance, but looking at the comparisons it doesn't seem there is an optimal ram speed for everything anyway, but 3200 seems to be the sweet spot for most things. I notice in all the ram comparisons, they all use G-Skill and use C14 RAM which sounds like it would be nice to have but the prices are crazy.

just 2 points:

1. if your RAM becomes completely or "almost" saturated, the programs will start swapping data to the HDD / SDD. And this would tremendously slow the whole thing. So you can't identify a ram bottleneck in speed terms , but if the RAM is saturated the whole PC will be slowed.
That of course is not a matter of RAM speed, but of how much RAM you need to work without swapping.

2. This whole thing about RAM speed, CL 16 versus CL 14 etc... is highly relevant with an AMD Ryzen CPU which is very dependent of RAM speed because it routes data between the CPU dies through RAM.
This is not the case for an Intel CPU, which has a completely different architecture.
The Intel CPUs are much less dependent of RAM speed.
You can see this in this study, for example, which was made with the same CPU you have
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/...-memory-performance-benchmark-analysis/2.html

So the gains you could expect with 3600 MHz RAM are really marginal, and probably not worth the expense

 

[plissk]

just 2 points:

1. if your RAM becomes completely or "almost" saturated, the programs will start swapping data to the HDD / SDD. And this would tremendously slow the whole thing. So you can't identify a ram bottleneck in speed terms , but if the RAM is saturated the whole PC will be slowed.
That of course is not a matter of RAM speed, but of how much RAM you need to work without swapping.

2. This whole thing about RAM speed, CL 16 versus CL 14 etc... is highly relevant with an AMD Ryzen CPU which is very dependent of RAM speed because it routes data between the CPU dies through RAM.
This is not the case for an Intel CPU, which has a completely different architecture.
The Intel CPUs are much less dependent of RAM speed.
You can see this in this study, for example, which was made with the same CPU you have
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/...-memory-performance-benchmark-analysis/2.html

So the gains you could expect with 3600 MHz RAM are really marginal, and probably not worth the expense

Thanks very much.

You are right on point 1, the RAM usage today went up to 25GB, running half a dozen apps or so, browsers with many tabs open, not sure why, so it does seem to occur frequently, I will try to get to the bottom of what is going on (I closed some apps but it didn't drop down and the main memory usage from apps seemed to be 1Password strangely!) and if need be add another 32GB of the same spec RAM. Thanks for the link. Cheers. BTW I now have an i9-9900KF instead of the 8700K but I imagine much the same principle applies.

 

[egda23]

Thanks very much.

You are right on point 1, the RAM usage today went up to 25GB, running half a dozen apps or so, browsers with many tabs open, not sure why, so it does seem to occur frequently, I will try to get to the bottom of what is going on (I closed some apps but it didn't drop down and the main memory usage from apps seemed to be 1Password strangely!) and if need be add another 32GB of the same spec RAM. Thanks for the link. Cheers. BTW I now have an i9-9900KF instead of the 8700K but I imagine much the same principle applies.

Yes same principles

 

[Karadjgne]

With Intels, ram speed use is more dependent on the software than anything else. Some programs can get a decent boost with higher speed ram, but with others it makes no difference once you get beyond memory controller speeds.

With most games, they are modular. Made up of thousands of relatively tiny files, a few Kb upto a couple of Mb. Those run through ram fast enough that the cpu spends most of its time backlogged, the files waiting in ram until demanded. So speeds have almost no measurable affect.

Large file transfers, like the maps used by Microsoft flight simulation are different. Instead of almost instant transfer on demand, the cpu is left waiting for the complete file, so speeds matter. Timings too.

Multiple apps, web pages, etc is more a size/performance impact, especially if you go beyond ram size and start relying on pagefile.