DDR 2400 MHz or wait for upgrade to DDR4?

[Mondozei]

So, I got myself 8 gigabyte of 1600 MHz of RAM memory when I began to buy my new PC about 1 and 1/2 year ago. I've been building it slowly, waiting for sales etc so it wasn't really "finished" until this past autumn. It's based around the i5 Haswell, my GPU is a 290 Sapphire Tri-X, my mobo is the MSI Z87-G45 Gaming.

So basically, I'm thinking about upgrading my memory. Right now, I can't say I'm bound by anything in my gaming, which is my primary motivation for upgrading as the only other stuff I do on my PC is writing essays, studying and reading, all of which don't require much as you all know. (I hope!).

I'm basically looking at 16 GB of 2400 MHz memory. My question is if its worth it compared to 2133 MHz & can I even use it on my current PC?
In addition, I'm thinking about waiting until Skylake maybe and get a new processor with DDR4 memory too, but I'm doubtful. The IPC gains on processors haven't been great lately and would DDR4 memory with, say, 2133 Mhz be that much faster than a 2400 MHz DDR counterpart?

 

[Mondozei]

Just to add, I'm assuming there is a significant benefit(i.e 10% or more in FPS?) for doing the upgrade? I heard something along these lines on the latest maximumpc podcast where Gordon Ung said that in the past there were no major differences but on Haswell, he has seen an improvement.

 

[Morbus]

I'm not sure buying a PC in parts of such a long period is wise. Even with sales, you'll still be better off buying it all at the same time, saving the money over time.

At any rate, DDR4 will require a new-generation CPU AND motherboard, and it probably won't be out at affordable consumer level prices for a year and a half still.

Also, RAM isn't relevant for graphics rendering, unless your GPU is running on the PC's RAM (as is the case with iGPU). Any upgrade to your RAM will have a very minor effect on FPSs, so as long as it isn't a bottleneck, you'll be fine.

 

[Mondozei]

For reference, here is the part I mentioned:

http://youtu.be/UVIpImGAnwk?t=35m30s

It's just like 90 seconds long or so.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

You will not see a speed boost - in games or anywhere else, really - from moving from DDR3-1600 to DDR3-2400. In fact, you probably wouldn't see a big increase from DDR4. (And it would require you to replace your entire system anyway.)

Moreover, at least on Newegg, all the DDR3-2400 RAM is 1.65v, which is... not good.

DDR3 spec is 1.5v. It's not uncommon for factory-overclocked RAM to be set to 1.65v, but more recent Intel CPUs tend to be pissy about it. So I'd avoid.

 

[h9826790]

For a reasonable up to date PC, the real world performance almost never limited by the RAM speed. If purely consider gaming, even a 1066 RAM is fast enough already.

 

[h9826790]

In your case, may be you can get an extra 1 or 2% improvement when running some benchmark software, but I really doubt that can you get any real benefit from this upgrade.

 

[Deders]

No real point upgrading unless you are overclocking to the point where the ram is becoming unstable, even then you can knock the ram multiplier down a notch.

Any performance gains won't be worth the amount of money you spend. and even if you went for 16GB I highly doubt you would use over half of it.

 

[DLGenesis]

depends on prices on release i guess

 

[thecoolnessrune]

You may see a small difference, but it won't be 10% outside of a few corner cases. AnAndTech's own Ian did a fantastic write-up on this back in September and showed that if you're at least 1866, you're doing fine, with 2133 pretty much maxing out what could be considered a tangible benefit.

Memory Scaling on Haswell CPU, IGP and dGPU: DDR3-1333 to DDR3-3000 Tested with G.Skill

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Given what I know and what the other contributors have said so far, I'd simply get another 2x4GB DDR3-1600 kit and add it to your system. But I've also played the game of just replacing DDR3-1600 RAM with slightly faster 2x8GB DDR3-1866. In my case, 1866 seems to be the practical limit for seeing any gains at all, and those gains are hardly worth it -- not significant for everyday use or even gaming.

You'll save yourself money going this route if you want more RAM. And you even need to question that as a "need:" 8GB is still considered more than adequate for most purposes. Nothing wrong with 16GB, except that it takes double the time to thoroughly test the kit.

 

[Hdgamer]

Your Ram is fine. Ram has so much bandwidth these days we haven't been bandwidth or speed limited in a long time. Even now 8 gigs seems to be more than enough and has been for a long time. If you have 8 gigs of 1600mhz ddr3 ram I say stick with it. There's no applications or new hardware that's going to be limited by the ram. Get a new ssd drive in place of, that's where you'll see the real benifits.

 

[Regz]

+1 for sticking with 1600mhz ram