Overclocking and memory slots and size...

[Claudius-07]

Just trying to understand something 100%...

With newer mobos, does it still hold true that the more ram you have the less your overclock will be?

If you have 2 X 4 GB of DDR3 vs 4 X 2 GB of DDR3 in say an i5 system... would it still be fair to say that if all else is equal, the fact you are populating only 2 slots with the 2 x 4GB, it would yield a bit better overclock in comparison to the 4 X 2GB situation? I understand that some mobos are better than others in this regard but just trying to get a general idea.

And on a side note, and again to be general and I am thinking more in the lines of video editing/encoding... rather than gaming, does trying to ramp up your memory speeds provide a worthwhile improvement? By this I mean if you can overclock your CPU to the stars, but have to sacrifice lowering your memory speed, would it be better to find a happy medium between the two, or go for the highest stable OC you can get and lower the RAM accordingly?

 

[universeis42]

To answer your question, I think that it is true (at least for AMD). I've heard of people with 4 RAM Sticks only able to raise their Northbridge by 500 Mhz or so.

 

[Ben90]

Yep, populating more slots still takes away a little bit away from your overclock. It really isn't that big of a deal unless you are trying to break benchmarks or something.

This link shows memory scaling in many applications. Keep in mind it is on a triple channel controller so the results you would see are going to be amplified a bit.

Most of the time its best to just focus everything on the core speed, but sometimes if your one or two bclocks away from being able to hit that next memory or uncore multiplier it can be beneficial to drop core speed a little bit.