More RAM vs. Tighter Timings

[proxy]

Hi Everybody,

Just a quick question. Doing a build with a 1090T and M4A89GTD Pro and have a choice between two kits of RAM to use. Was wondering what kind of difference I'd see, and which would be better between:

Corsair XMS3 3x2GB 1600MHz CAS7 1T, down clocked to 1333MHz and tightened timings

OR

Mushkin Silverline 2x4GB 1333MHz CAS9

Any useful input would be appreciated.

[LarkStarr]

the rule of thumb is that more ram beats all. but if you're not going to USE 8 gigs of ram...

[proxy]

Yep, that's usually my rule of thumb as well, I was just wondering how much of a performance boost tighter timings and 1T command rate would have on performance, versus an extra 2GB of RAM.

On a side note, the 1090T is stable at 4GHz (20x multipliler) and 1.3825V, in the process of lowering the VCore in increments now to see how low it can go before it becomes unstable =).

[Pansophic]

Do you think you could make used all of the 6GB available?

[draemn]

Games will like higher memory speeds over timings fyi. I forget the math off the top of my head, but you can calculate the exact time it takes for each access with RAM as a function of speed and inverse timings (I think). As long as the time is the same, just pick the highest clock speed for gaming (with it's paired up timings). 6GB is what I'd call the sweet spot where 90% of the time it will be more than games use.

Since 6GB is almost always enough, I'd go for faster 6GB over slower 8GB. The other option is to buy extra RAM to turn into your "swap" or paging file and that will speed up your system slightly when it does use more than 6GB of RAM. I don't think it's really worth using RAM as a paging file once you have that much installed... it's only really for if you have 4GB or less imo.

[sswilson]

Are you planning on running one of the 3X sticks in single channel mode? AM3 spec is dual channel.

[Bond007]

Yeah there isn't really any point to 3 sticks of memory. Buy 2x2gb or 2x4gb. Dual channel will kill 3 sticks in single channel.

[proxy]

Hmm, sswilson and Bond007, I was wondering about that, I've always thought/read that dual channel only really gives about a 5% boost if that to an AMD system. I've been reading over at the Gigabyte forums, and for RAM with their motherboards the Gigabyte staff were advocating downclocking to 1333MHz (something about potential damage over that which seemed kinda like malarky to me) and tightening the timings. They also suggested running in unganged mode over dual for overclocking. I'll have to dig up the threads. I figured while I have this system at my desk I could experiment a bit and see if there were any real benefits, though I'm a bit lazy to do a bunch of benchmarks.

Pansophic and draemn, I don't know, I have a dev laptop with 4GB RAM on it, and I disabled the page file in favour of memory because of the performance hit from high hard drive I/O when compiling. I frequently get up to 4GB if I'm not careful as to what's running, but then again this is on an old T7200 clunker. But yeah, I was thinking 6GB would be more than enough for now.

Question is Dual Channel 1333 CAS9, or Single Channel 1333/1600 CAS6/7 1T =). I'll have to try and dig up that formula you mentioned draemn.

Thanks for all the input guys =).