RAM 1600Mhz vs 1866Mhz vs 2133 Mhz

We decide to test the difference between 1600mhz, 1866mhz and 2133mhz RAM to see what really is the difference. Is it worth the extra money to go to so called "High Performance RAM" or not?

Our test system was an ASUS Sabertooth Motherboard with an i7-4770k @4.2Ghz and a GTX760.

The benchmark program we used was 3Dmark11 as it is a 64bit program (Other benchmarks are only 32bit and therefore do not utilise the full amount of RAM)

The test results;

8 Gigs of GSKILL RipjawsX 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 1.5v: 8392 3DMark11

8 Gigs of GSKILL ARES 1866Mhz 9-10-9-28 1.5v: 8531 3DMark11 (a performance increase of 1.65% from 1600mhz)

8 Gigs of GSKILL ARES 2133Mhz 9-11-10-28 1.55v: 8523 3DMark11 (a performance increase of 1.56% from 1600Mhz)

As you can clearly see we only achieved an increase of approx 1.5%

If you are benchmarking your system as a sport against other people, then this increase can make all the difference, but in real system performance it is hardly worth mentioning.

You can of course get RAM with lower latency timings, but again the increase in system performance is minimal.

We recommend 1600Mhz RAM as it is far more STABLE and RELIABLE.