RAM timings and upgrade confusion!

esuhl

I've been thinking about upgrading from 6GB to 12GB RAM as I often see high memory usage. It seems it would be best to get a 12GB kit of identical memory, but that's fairly expensive and there are a lot of second-hand options for 6GB of RAM for a quarter of the price.

I imagine that, since each 6GB kit will be in its own channel, compatibility shouldn't (fingers crossed) be a problem. Anyway, I can't seem to find the same model of 6GB kit that I already have.

Available RAM seems to have poorer timings (e.g. 9-9-9-24 instead of 7-7-7-20) but a faster speed (e.g. 1600MHz instead of 1333MHz).

I presume both RAM kits will have to run with the same settings, so the highest mutually-supported timings and bus speed will be used. But how much difference will this make in practical performance terms?

What's the best (fastest, cheap, available) spec memory to get? I'll probably stick with Corsair memory in the hope that it will minimise any compatibility issues. Any tips?

Cheers in advance :-)

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P.S. I just noticed in RAMmon that although the RAM I have runs at 7-7-7-20 @1.65V, my BIOS only reports it running at 9-9-9-24 @1.5V. Is it worth tweaking the BIOS settings while I just have this RAM?

Ilija

Hi, I don't know where you'll going to get 6GB of additional ram, unless 3X2GB, but I don't think you have that menny slots available for RAM. Get 8GB of the same speed ram (2X4 or 1X8)

They will both run on slower MHz speed, but you will not notice the difference. RAM is not that expensive, I would get 2X8GB for around £60.

I_have_spoken

Windows will use all the memory available for caches etc. You need to look at the number of hard faults/sec to determine if the machine is genuinely running short of RAM.

GunJack

and yes, it's worth checking the timings/speed in BIOS...

audigex

Ilija wrote: »

Hi, I don't know where you'll going to get 6GB of additional ram, unless 3X2GB, but I don't think you have that menny slots available for RAM. Get 8GB of the same speed ram (2X4 or 1X8)

They will both run on slower MHz speed, but you will not notice the difference. RAM is not that expensive, I would get 2X8GB for around £60.

I'd assume that he's got one of the early DDR3 boards, where Intel particularly tried to make triple channel RAM into a thing: it quickly dropped away and people stuck with dual channel, but it was fairly common for a couple of years. These boards have 6 DDR slots and typically came with 6GB RAM.

For the most part, forget the timings - modern chipsets appreciate higher frequency far more than tight timings, and you'll almost certainly not notice the difference in real world practical use. The tighter timing set may give you a little more head room if overclocking heavily, but I doubt you're overclocked that heavily if you're only just considering increasing from 6GB anyway

bsod

what uses 6GB of ram

I_have_spoken

64bit Excel on 500,000 row s/sheet

John_Gray

bsod wrote: »

what uses 6GB of ram

Photoshop; video editing programs;...

bsod

do you know more about the op's system than they do?

Fightsback

bsod wrote: »

what uses 6GB of ram

Running a couple of VM's for a start,

bsod wrote: »

do you know more about the op's system than they do?

What do you know about what the OP does ?

Nice to see another positive contribution to the troubleshooting.

bsod

I know nothing about what they do, which is why I asked them, in their thread, about their system.

If I needed random speculative answers about what could use some ram up, from unconnected people, I would have started my own thread or googled it.

Somehow I've managed to edit photo's, videos, excel spreadsheets and run vm's for decades in far less ram than the op has.

your positive contribution to the op is strangely missing, yet again.... back in your box