What difference in using lower speed ram

[RobTi]

Hi so I just got a Ryzen 5 2600 and have been trying to read up and work out about ram speeds, so in real world terms what speed should I be looking for as I understand that with Ryzen I should get the fastest I can, but then costs shoot up, so any help on this ?
Thanks

[DanceswithUnix]

I think the rule is the fastest you can get at a sane price. However the only Ryzen box I have built so far is a 2600 that uses ECC which is only available in what most enthusiasts would consider "Slow" and "Glacial" and the machine runs lovely. But then that is a work box, and doesn't play games.

Googling for "Ryzen ram speed scaling" got me:



So the 3000 rated ram is a nice bump, 3200 is probably the sweet spot to aim for, after that it seems to not much matter, but 3200 isn't usually horribly expensive.

OFC if you have less than a 1080ti graphics card, you probably won't notice so much difference.

[RobTi]

Thanks only have a rx580 and just getting back into pc’s so not a gamer

[DanceswithUnix]

Thanks only have a rx580 and just getting back into pc’s so not a gamer

It will help with other memory intensive programs as well as games, so for a 10% boost in some circumstances it seems worth going for 3200 ram.

As someone who always goes for ECC ram that's awkward as you can only get 2666MHz in ECC tops. OTOH, if you overclock ECC ram you will know with certainty if you are getting errors on it from the warnings in the system log

[RobTi]

Thanks for the help and I like that chart, so 3200 it is, now to find some Ryzen friendly at a decent price

[badass]

I think the rule is the fastest you can get at a sane price. However the only Ryzen box I have built so far is a 2600 that uses ECC which is only available in what most enthusiasts would consider "Slow" and "Glacial" and the machine runs lovely. But then that is a work box, and doesn't play games.

Googling for "Ryzen ram speed scaling" got me:



So the 3000 rated ram is a nice bump, 3200 is probably the sweet spot to aim for, after that it seems to not much matter, but 3200 isn't usually horribly expensive.

OFC if you have less than a 1080ti graphics card, you probably won't notice so much difference.

I'm amazed at the difference between 2666 and 3200 RAM!

I remember the difference between DDR and DDR2 being the same 10% back in the day - except DDR2 had twice the bandwidth (and at about the same latency in ms)

[skidu]

It depends on specific games/applications - i just 'downgraded' from 3200 to 2666 due to compatibility issues with ryzen and noticed only a 1.74% difference when benchmarking Corona. However there was a 7.35% difference between 2133 and 3200.