Ram: more mhz or more gbs?

[TomokoZerra]

I'm curious as weather or not ram with more megahertz is a good substitute for getting ram with more gigabyte storage/size/whatever that's called I forget right now. As right now I'm just trying to get a clearer understand of ram so I know what I will go for. I normally go for 64gbs just so I got the extra space if needed. Thanks for any advice on the subject. It'll vehemently will be a big help!

[Agent]

You don't need more than 16 GB for gaming from there on out try aim for 3200 MHz or 3600 MHz speeds.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

High Mhz equates to higher bandwidth in Gbs. However, overall installed size and using Dual or Quad channel (depending on what motherboard supports) is overall the better route to go.

If using Intel 10th gen i3/i5 or older, then 2666 is just fine.
If using 10th gen i7/i9 or newer, use 2933/3000

If you have a board that supports higher, like any Intel "Z" chipset based board, then just go towards 3200 or 3600.

Lower CAS helps to, as this is how data delays work, thus for CAS, lower is faster.

A good sweet spot is 3200 @ CAS-14 or 3600 @ CAS-16

If you can help it and its supported on your board; I would aim for 2x 16GB

[nullable]

TomokoZerra původně napsal:

I'm curious as weather or not ram with more megahertz is a good substitute for getting ram with more gigabyte storage/size/whatever that's called I forget right now. As right now I'm just trying to get a clearer understand of ram so I know what I will go for. I normally go for 64gbs just so I got the extra space if needed. Thanks for any advice on the subject. It'll vehemently will be a big help!

It's better to have enough RAM, even if it's slower or in a non-optimal configuration than not enough RAM at the fastest speed, in an optimal configuration.

Having 4GB of DDR4 DDR4-4600 in dual channel is going to be worse than 1x16GB of PC2133 any time you need to address more than 4GB of RAM. Because any time you have to address virtual RAM, it's a million times slower than RAM, and all the benefit of faster RAM would be wasted.

You want enough RAM first. You want it in good dual channel configuration second. You want it to be high performance third.

[Illusion of Progress]

TomokoZerra původně napsal:

I'm curious as weather or not ram with more megahertz is a good substitute for getting ram with more gigabyte storage/size/whatever that's called I forget right now.

No, speed is not a substitute for quantity at all. If your workflow exceeds, say, 16 GB on standard 2,133 MHz JEDEC DDR4 speed RAM, you're not going to magically compute it faster with 4,400 MHz RAM and thus be able to make 16 GB work.

On the other hand, faster RAM gives more performance (it's usually not "cost effective", but that's another discussion; the performance difference IS in fact there which is what we're talking about). Having excess RAM, however, does nothing for performance. If your workflow needs 12 GB, then 128 GB will perform no better than 16 GB.

Your best bet is to know your needs (quantity-wise), and then choose a speed/cost ratio that works for you. 16 GB and 32 GB of 3,200 MHz and 3,600 Mhz are about the sweet spot range at the moment. Some people need more RAM than this, and others want faster performance than this. You need to know your own needs to choose best.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

With how the market is now though, you generally won't find buying 2666 or 3000 being that much more cost effective over 3200 or 3600. If you have a board that doesn't allow for 3200 though, then those make sense. Like a B460 board for example.

[_I_]

also keep in mind performance is speed (freq x2) / cl timings
3200 cl 16 = 3000 cl 15 = 1600 cl 8

but for games it make almost no difference, will only be able to tell the differences between 2666 and 4000 in ram intensive tasks, maybe 5fps in games tops

too much ram will not hurt, but will not help
not enough ram will force windows to use paging to drives, which is much slower than even the slowest ram
windows tried this with readydisk and intel with optane

the drive, even fastest of nvme is still the slowest part inside a pc

[Monk]

How much you need us down to what you do, 8f it's just game and general usage, 16 is fine, 32 gives you plenty of headroom if you have a hundred chrome tabs open etc.

As for the gain it depends on your system and the game, in say warzone on competitive settings with a very fast cpu and a gpu that won't be a limiting factor, going from 3200 to 4400 can give 30-40fps gain.

Now, that's only relevant if you have the screen to make use of it and your after maximum performance / fps.