Going Sandy Bridge? Skip The Highspeed RAM

[RicheemxX]

I was just reading an interesting article over at the tech report which tested the effects of memory speeds on Sandy Bridge performance. While it would have been nice to see them test a few different modules, mainly some low end stuff, they did run tests at several different speeds.

The test pretty much show that in terms of actual real world performance the faster memory speeds and tighter timings didn't show much in terms of performance. In fact in most cases the difference was negligible.

Exploring the impact of memory speed on Sandy Bridge performance - The Tech Report - Page 1

Now this isn't something new to most of us as most know that there isn't much real world difference and most the time higher speed ram was used to achieve higher overclocks. Well these new chips don't OC the same way, the base speeds aren't tied to one another as they were in the past. This means that faster memory isn't required to keep up with higher base clock frequencies so you are better off putting the money into something more useful

[ShyguyXPC]

So in otherwords, Cheap Value RAM + Sandy Bridge + OC the Snot Out of the CPU = ENTIRELY POSSIBLE?

Sounds Good to me... maybe next round of PC upgrades may opt for Sandy Bridge after all... though still holding out for AMD see how things go with that.

[RicheemxX]

That's pretty much what it sounds like to me. The tests did show marked improvement in some areas but most things like gaming and daily apps didn't show enough to warrant buying some super high speed high end stuff.