Well today I did the second change.
My specs up until today were:
Motherboard:ASRock X58 Extreme3
CPU: Intel Core i7 950 @ 3.07GHz
RAM: 3X2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 Corsair CMX6GX3M3C1600C7 Timings 7-8-7-20
Hard Drive: Samsung SSD 840 Series (250GB)
Hard Drive: SAMSUNG HD103SJ (1TB)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
As you can probably guess by the post title I changed my RAM. I did it because it bugs the hell out of my that I can't render a video and keep using my computer because it rubs out of RAM.
Here's the big problem I had. as you can see by the specs above, my computer is from the time people thought triple channel was going to be the next big thing, so I chose a triple channel motherboard.
Well, it turns out it wasn't. And now buying RAM for these machines requires that you go hunting online for it. And I couldn't find the same type of RAM I had.
So I finally decided to get these:
Since the voltages aren't the same as my old sticks I can't keep them both on (at least now without playing a little with my BIOS settings and I have no patience for that)so I doubled the amount of RAM I had (and I have 3 sticks that I may sell)
And of course the best thing about having new computer hardware is... Benchmarks!!
Here's a video of the results (or just keep reading below)
I used 2 programs for the tests MaxxMEM² - PreView and a free trial of PassMark PerformanceTest.
The test rig is what I already listed above and I ran a control test with the setup I already had and the changed the RAM.
Control: 3X2GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 Corsair CMX6GX3M3C1600C7 Timings 7-8-7-20
Test: 3X4GB DDR3 SDRAM PC3-12800 Corsair CMZ12GX3M3A1600C9 Timings 9-9-9-24
What I wanted to know:
How much difference is there between the 2 types of RAM? Do de timings really matter?
If there is a difference is it big enough to have an impact on the actual performance of the pc?
Here are the results of the pure RAM test:
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So clearly timings are there for a reason. You can see that the first test had better results meaning that my old RAM was actually faster than this new one.
But does that matter?
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Changing to the slower RAM made the CPU, 2D and 3D graphics scores lower. Not by a lot... but slower anyway.
So I guess that if your going for the ultimate gaming machine (and don't care about the budget) don't forget to check the RAM timings while you're choosing.