There are too many generalities drawn about RAM speed and its impact. Pretty much the same as with SSDs.... SSDs give great benchmarks. and significantly affect perforemance in certain applications (like premiere) but, the user remains the bottleneck in productivity in the typical business office..... office productivity won't rise an iota by switching to SSDs. With RAM it's the same thing and it pretty much goes along with all the other RAM myths.
a) DDR3 > 1.50volts will fry your CPU, RAM and memory ... not true
b) DDR4 > 1.20volts will fry your CPU, RAM and memory ... not true
c) Faster RAM / Lower CAS has no impact on gaming. ... not true
With the last one, you can only blame users for not reading reviews carefully and seeing what they say and what they do not say. In most instances RAM may not be the bottleneck .... however change the test system and that changes. How we can get to see this differences includes:
a) Look at minimum frame rates instead of just average
b) Add a 2nd GFX card
c) Remove the actual performance bottleneck.
If a game is GPU bound, using faster RAM does squat
If a game is CPU bound, using faster RAM does squat
If a game is RAM bound, using faster RAM changes things (i.e. STALKER series, F1)
here we see an 11% increase in gaming performance going from 1600 to 2400 ..
Significant ? yes, that's about the same as going from a 970 to 980
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_970_Gaming/27.html
Will you "notice" it ? ... I doubt many can tell the difference between 159 and 177 fps ... THG recommends not upgrading your GFX card until you can jump 3 tiers
Here's some other comparisons taken from RAM testing over the years
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2792/12
22.3 % (SLI) increase in minimum frame rates w/ C6 instead of C8 in Far Cry 2
18% (single card) / 5% (SLI) increase in minimum frame rates w/ C6 instead of C8 in Dawn of War
15% (single card) / 5% (SLI) increase in minimum frame rates w/ C6 instead of C8 in World in Conflict
Also see
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2011/01/11/the-best-memory-for-sandy-bridge/1
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7364/memory-scaling-on-haswell/10
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6372/memory-performance-16gb-ddr31333-to-ddr32400-on-ivy-bridge-igp-with-gskill/14
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?166512-Arma-3-CPU-vs-RAM-performance-comparison-1600-2133-up-to-15-FPS-gain
When it comes to workstation applications, again, it's very application specific. With premiere, the focus is usually on more RAM rather than faster RAM
Why memory is so important: Like any demanding application, Premiere Pro requires a good chunk of memory to operate. Based on extensive testing, we’ve found that memory can have a big impact on render times. The reason for this is that according to Adobe, “Premiere Pro is as sensitive to the amount of GPU memory [VRAM] available as normal CPU memory [DRAM].” In other words, the application needs as much as possible of both. VRAM (which stands for video memory) is often the first resource the system will turn to when rendering, but as soon as it runs out of VRAM, it’ll use your system’s CPU to render. And since memory fuels the CPU that’s constantly running for rendering, it’s critical to max out the amount of DRAM and provide as much fuel as possible. When rendering big files, it’s easy to exhaust your RAM, meaning your system will begin dipping into “virtual memory,” where it treats your storage drive like memory.
https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-143/Hardware-Recommendations
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/workstation-adobe-4k-guide.pdf
As you can see in all of those resources, not much mention at all on RAM speed but a lotta talk about More RAM. My assumption as to why the subject never comes up is that the bottleneck is elsewhere.
Still my approach is t buy the fastest RAm available up until the point where the price / performance curve starts to rise sharply .... right now that point is at 3200 for 2 x 16GB
Right now, the cheapest 4 x 8Gb set on pcpartpciker between 2400 and 3200 is DDR4-3000 CAS 15 ($189) ... 3200 CAS 16 is $12 more ... 3600 is $100+ more
http://pcpartpicker.com/product/nZfmP6/gskill-memory-f43000c15q32gvrb
Of course brand availability and costs vary by what country you are in
Thx a lot!
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