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  • YuLeven - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Thanks for the review.

    But with all due respect to this site that makes one of the best hardware coverage in English, I'm kind missing interesting stories lately. The late 2013 MacBook Pro, some Windows tablets, GPUs, CPUs, operate systems... anything.

    As fat as real world performance is concerned, RAM impact is so negligible for the vast majority of users that this sort of article ends kinda of... boring.

    Yet again, thank you for the article. I meant no offence in any way!
  • SeeManRun - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Definitely agree with this one...
  • Zak - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    I have to agree that these memory articles are uninteresting and not particularly useful. As others pointed out -- and these articles confirm -- the real life difference between decent DDR1600 and super-duper ultra-high-end RAM are virtually non-existent. One article summarizing that would be more than enough.
  • jeffrey - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Ian Cutress,
    Hello again! This is another article stating 1866/C9 being the minimum for Haswell and to avoid 1600 or less. Even going so far as to say, "Any kit 1600 MHz or less is usually bad news."

    However, this ignores 1600/C8 modules. The 1600/C8 score a 200 on your Performance Index at stock timings. This is at your recommended 200 level. There are several kits of 2x4 GB 1600/C8 on Newegg that have memory profiles of 8-8-8-24 at 1.5v. I'll repeat, these 1600 8-8-8-24 1.5v kits score 200 on the Performance Index and hit the current memory sweet spot for most people of 2x4 GB. This scores very close to the 1866/C9 kits which have a Performance Index score of 207.

    The reason I bring this up is that the 1600 8-8-8-24 kits are often less expensive than the 1866/C9 kits and offer essentially all of the performance.

    I enjoy reading your articles and appreciate how active you have been lately!
  • The_Assimilator - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    This is why I am sticking with my DDR3-1600/CL7 memory until DDR4 hits mainstream. PI = 228 which is faster than 1866/CL9.
  • jeffrey - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Ian, any comment on 1600/C7 or 1600/C8?
  • Gigaplex - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    "In this graph the x-axis is the Performance Index of the DRAM, and thus a PI of 200 can be 1600 C8 or 2400 C12."

    This article does not ignore 1600/C8 modules.
  • Popskalius - Sunday, February 23, 2014 - link

    hi, i'm new to ddr3 lol. Re: haswell & 1600/C8, anandtech's intel gaming rig pairs an i5 with 1600/C9. Is this bc it's the cheapest build so not worth the price/performance, or is there really something bad about mixing haswell with anything slower than 1600/c8?
    thanks a bunch
  • Senti - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    And another incompetent article from Ian... Didn't even bother to read comments to the previous one to correct errors...

    Oh, and my IP (range?) is still blacklisted by stupid spam filter. Of course, I probably not love my job enough...
  • AncientWisdom - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Lol maybe it should spam filter depending on the job happiness scale, seems legit.
  • Khenglish - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Your tRFC and tRRD rows are flipped in the table on the first page.

    That tRFC is ridiculously high. Cut it by 150-200 in XTU (yes, by up to 200. It's that ridiculously high) and you'll see around a 500MB/s bandwidth improvement. For reference I've run 2133 CAS9 stable at tFRC 128 in a laptop.

    Also it would be nice to see results on an IVB system as well as Haswell. IVB is just as good at the top end, but I've seen signs that haswell has a better IMC, so while this memory is stable on haswell, it might not be on IVB. Also most people still have an IVB or SB anyway.
  • Gen-An - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link

    You can't cut the tRFC by much on these, they use 4Gbit Hynix H5TQ4G83MFR ICs, and especially not at the high clocks they're running. It's going to be over 200 at about any speed, and you pretty much have to run it at 396 or so for 2933.
  • Hairs_ - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    Can we please stop this series of articles now? please?
  • jasonelmore - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    yeah enough with the RAM reviews. we've been on DDR3 for almost 10 years,
  • Jeffrey Bosboom - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link

    The only explanation I can think of for all these RAM reviews is that in exchange for samples, Anandtech is obligated to provide brand exposure. Otherwise there'd just be one roundup saying "yeah, they're all about the same". If that's the case, I feel sorry for Ian, who surely has better things to do with his time.
  • Navvie - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link

    This is what I figured, the original article was quite interesting. But this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for article ideas.
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link

    Gotta agree. At most this should be a twice a year round up; maybe only once yearly depending on how frequently binning changes switch out which clock/cl combinations offer the best bang for the buck.
  • Gen-An - Wednesday, December 18, 2013 - link

    Ian, you state these sticks are using Hynix CFR, but CFR is a 2Gbit IC, it'd be impossible to make an 8GB DIMM with them. This has to be Hynix 4Gbit MFR.
  • ceomrman - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - link

    Hmmm... couldn't this article just say "premium RAM is a hoax. Just buy some decent sticks from a known brand with plenty of 4 or 5 Egg reviews, and go with 1866 MHz if your motherboard will support it. Go ahead and buy faster RAM, but don't spend much since the performance impact is not noticeable in the real world."
    There are zero users who would not benefit more from some other use of the money, either in their savings account or in the form of a bigger SSD, nicer motherboard, more efficient PSU, faster CPU, etc.
    Dog + pony show = Blech.

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