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Difference in ram speeds
stuffstuff123
I've been looking into ram recently and I started to wonder what the difference between 1600mhz and 1866mhz ram, what is the difference?
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the earlier post is a excelent explenation (but now I get more technical)
-your motherboard often only supports one speciffic ram speed.
-using faster ram than your motherboard supports will make it not being fully utilized
(for example buying 2000Mhz ram and installing it on a motherboard that only supports 1600 and 1866, will make it run at the highest possble setting : 1866) this usually will go without any bugs..
But if you try to install 1333Mhz ram on that motherboard it will not work or give severe bugs.
*so you CAN use faster ram than you need but you CANT use slower ram than you need, however faster ram generally is more expensive.. so buying the right type is smartest in most cases*
Next I explain cycles : you CPU runs at a certain speed, lets say 3.0 Ghz x 4 cores.
Thats 3 Billion calculations per second x 4. = 12 Billions calculations per second.
But for EVERY calculation your CPU uses ram.. thats why it runs in "cycles" and does a number of those cycles per second (called "multiplicator")
say you install that 3.0Ghz chip on your motherboard with 1600Mhz ram..
than gives you 12/1.6 = 7.5 cycles per second.
If you use 1866 Mhz ram instead (given our motherboard supports that
that gives you 12/1.866 = 6.4 cycles per second
Each cycle produces heat in your CPU, so slower ram causes your CPU to run hotter.
This is no problem in normal setup (as that CPU is made to be able to cope with the difference) but when you want to overclock, you basicly add more cycles.. so having less to start with gives more space to work with. having fast ram is a must have if you want to overclock.
For normal users, faster ram makes your pc produce just a little less heat. making your system just a tad more stable and durable.
Finally I go into delay and accesspeed.. you may see each "cycle" as a collection of little data chunks, being send from your CPU to your RAM and back again.
as you can imagine, this sending proces takes time.. and slows down your overal system speed.. this delay is caused by the interface speed of your motherboard (after all there is bit of space between your CPU and RAM) and some motherboards have faster "lanes" or "infastructurë" than others.. think of this like the difference between a small unharded path, and a big highway.. and of things like "private roads" versus ""communal roads"
more and better "lanes" aka roads means faster interaction (less delay, delay being here traveling time)
=so when buying a motherboard you might want to look at this factir as well=
But when were talking delay between GPU and RAM we mostly talk about the time it takes to "park" data.. RAM too has a C(ycle) speed.. (in fact it has 4, each for a part of the parking process, think of this of how fast to find a spot, how fast to park there, how fast to find the adress you wanted to go to after you parked, how fast to get there inside) but generally those 4 are combined in 1 number, often the c-speed number is not even advertised in many shops even though it does matter.
thats why ram with lower C-speed is always better, than ram with the same frequence but lower C-speed.
More cycles (lower ramspeed) means that same delay will happen more often. (thats why higher speed ram often has a slightly higher C-value.. when one has to park less often, it is less of a problem if it takes a little longer, though both fast C-speed AND high frequence ram ofcource is best.
But High C-speed ram often is expensive in fact it is THE most derterming factor in the price of RAM..
Even though frequence matters more, when one starts overclocking your CPU your number of cycles rises and that delay becomes really a factor.
The story about harddisks of previous poster is untrue in that that delay is not the product of your Frequence (1600 or 1866Mhz) but is the product of acces time (c-speed)
SDD drives are indeed a LOT faster and their accestime/delay (parking speed remember) is a lot better than that of traditional harddrives (hundres of times faster) because of this it CAN happen when you have a fast SDD, that the delay on your RAM (C-Speed) is higher than the delay on that SSD..
-while this is not a problem in the sence it will not work, a computer only runs as fast as it's slowest part, ans since RAM is a lot cheaper than SSD disks.. having low C-speed, ram with a highspeed SSD drive, is kinda wasting money.
-your motherboard often only supports one speciffic ram speed.
-using faster ram than your motherboard supports will make it not being fully utilized
(for example buying 2000Mhz ram and installing it on a motherboard that only supports 1600 and 1866, will make it run at the highest possble setting : 1866) this usually will go without any bugs..
But if you try to install 1333Mhz ram on that motherboard it will not work or give severe bugs.
*so you CAN use faster ram than you need but you CANT use slower ram than you need, however faster ram generally is more expensive.. so buying the right type is smartest in most cases*
Next I explain cycles : you CPU runs at a certain speed, lets say 3.0 Ghz x 4 cores.
Thats 3 Billion calculations per second x 4. = 12 Billions calculations per second.
But for EVERY calculation your CPU uses ram.. thats why it runs in "cycles" and does a number of those cycles per second (called "multiplicator")
say you install that 3.0Ghz chip on your motherboard with 1600Mhz ram..
than gives you 12/1.6 = 7.5 cycles per second.
If you use 1866 Mhz ram instead (given our motherboard supports that
that gives you 12/1.866 = 6.4 cycles per second
Each cycle produces heat in your CPU, so slower ram causes your CPU to run hotter.
This is no problem in normal setup (as that CPU is made to be able to cope with the difference) but when you want to overclock, you basicly add more cycles.. so having less to start with gives more space to work with. having fast ram is a must have if you want to overclock.
For normal users, faster ram makes your pc produce just a little less heat. making your system just a tad more stable and durable.
Finally I go into delay and accesspeed.. you may see each "cycle" as a collection of little data chunks, being send from your CPU to your RAM and back again.
as you can imagine, this sending proces takes time.. and slows down your overal system speed.. this delay is caused by the interface speed of your motherboard (after all there is bit of space between your CPU and RAM) and some motherboards have faster "lanes" or "infastructurë" than others.. think of this like the difference between a small unharded path, and a big highway.. and of things like "private roads" versus ""communal roads"
more and better "lanes" aka roads means faster interaction (less delay, delay being here traveling time)
=so when buying a motherboard you might want to look at this factir as well=
But when were talking delay between GPU and RAM we mostly talk about the time it takes to "park" data.. RAM too has a C(ycle) speed.. (in fact it has 4, each for a part of the parking process, think of this of how fast to find a spot, how fast to park there, how fast to find the adress you wanted to go to after you parked, how fast to get there inside) but generally those 4 are combined in 1 number, often the c-speed number is not even advertised in many shops even though it does matter.
thats why ram with lower C-speed is always better, than ram with the same frequence but lower C-speed.
More cycles (lower ramspeed) means that same delay will happen more often. (thats why higher speed ram often has a slightly higher C-value.. when one has to park less often, it is less of a problem if it takes a little longer, though both fast C-speed AND high frequence ram ofcource is best.
But High C-speed ram often is expensive in fact it is THE most derterming factor in the price of RAM..
Even though frequence matters more, when one starts overclocking your CPU your number of cycles rises and that delay becomes really a factor.
The story about harddisks of previous poster is untrue in that that delay is not the product of your Frequence (1600 or 1866Mhz) but is the product of acces time (c-speed)
SDD drives are indeed a LOT faster and their accestime/delay (parking speed remember) is a lot better than that of traditional harddrives (hundres of times faster) because of this it CAN happen when you have a fast SDD, that the delay on your RAM (C-Speed) is higher than the delay on that SSD..
-while this is not a problem in the sence it will not work, a computer only runs as fast as it's slowest part, ans since RAM is a lot cheaper than SSD disks.. having low C-speed, ram with a highspeed SSD drive, is kinda wasting money.
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1866-1600 = 266 MHz of speed - 266 million memory allocations per second difference.
If you don't have a solid state drive, it won't matter which one you get, as you'll probably be limited by your hard drive speed anyway.
If you don't have a solid state drive, it won't matter which one you get, as you'll probably be limited by your hard drive speed anyway.
