Gigabyte Motherboard + G-Skill Memory

[Rhaom]

I am looking to upgrade my memory for my gaming rig and have been looking at G.Skills Ripjaw or Trident memory.

My motherboard however... (GA-990FXA-UD3) does not cover G.Skill as supported memory and I also noticed that any G.Skill memory above 1666mhz runs at 1.65v not 1.5v

So I am wondering if anybody has any further knowledge as to if the following memory is suitable for use with my board.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...PA63XXPB7SZCYQ

[Bonebreaker777]

Just go for some Crucial or Corsair memory modules from a retailer which provides 7day return policy.
You get the memory, try it, if no good, send it back and worst case you will re-spend the refund as instore credit for a different set of modules.

[herulach]

What do you already have? If you're expecting a performance increase from just ram you'll be disappointed.

[MrJim]

I've been looking into buying some more RAM myself just recently. The price difference between 1600 & 1866 speeds is relatively small at the moment, the 'sweet spot' probably being 1866 at Cas9 & 1.5v, I think. The latency of faster RAM tends to reduce the impact of going to faster speeds, & the price of such kits goes through the roof. As herulach points out, the resulting performance increase from the fastest RAM is pretty marginal on the whole (with the exception of certain very memory intensive applications).

If I remember correctly, you need to be a bit wary of 1.65v RAM too. I'm not sure about AMD processors like yours, but I believe the newer Intel ones should only be paired with 1.5v or lower RAM.

[Bonebreaker777]

1600Mhz CL8 @ 1.35V are widely available as well. From Crucial.
But true, the performance gain is close to non-existent. Least a 1.35V memory would make your integrated memory controllers last longer (due to material fatigue). But again only by a diminishable length.
Choose whatever you fancy.

[Rhaom]

Currently as said before I run a GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard with 12gb of Corsair Vengance RAM but I should really be running 8 or 16 rather than 12 since its 3 sticks on 4 so they are not running together properly.

I know the Vengance is 1.5v and I do also know that RAM wont give me that big of a performance jump I just cannot find anywhere that sells a single 4gb stick of matching ram so I am going to have to replace the whole lot in order to get 16gb in which case I might as will go with 2x8gb rather than 4x4gb since that way its future proof if i ever decide to go further.

The weak link of my computer is the video card which is only an Nvidia 550 TI but I am waiting till January for the non-reference models of the 290X to come out so the prices will drop a bit.

I was just looking at different memory options since I am looking at replace my 3x4gb sticks for 2x8gb sticks is all, no particular reason why I chose G.Skill

[herulach]

Unless you know you have a need for so much ram, you're better just pulling one stick and running 8GB dual channel, put the £100 you're saving into a GPU. Games really don't need that much memory, and presumably you're not heavily into video editing etc, or you'd be on intel.

[kalniel]

Currently as said before I run a GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard with 12gb of Corsair Vengance RAM but I should really be running 8 or 16 rather than 12 since its 3 sticks on 4 so they are not running together properly.

3 sticks should run fine in 4 slots, what symptoms do you have that it's not running properly together?

I know the Vengance is 1.5v and I do also know that RAM wont give me that big of a performance jump I just cannot find anywhere that sells a single 4gb stick of matching ram so I am going to have to replace the whole lot in order to get 16gb

Why? At most you'll only have to buy one pair, then you can use matched dual channels with each channel containing one from your old and one from your new pair.

Also there's nothing wrong with G.skill ram - the motherboard QVL list isn't something you should worry about as a consumer - just make sure that the specifications of the RAM are supported by your motherboard. They don't usually test QVL after the motherboard is released, so it won't contain newer RAM.

[Bonebreaker777]

You can't find a 4GB Corsair module?
3 modules instead of 4 are just fine till you encounter instability issues.
But agree with the rest, save your money and rather put it toward your future GPU.

[Rhaom]

The RAM I am currently using is http://www.scan.co.uk/products/12gb-...-9-24-xmp-150v

I know bits about computers but not hugely indepth when it comes to all the fiddly hardware information! (hence the reason for asking the question)

I was told that running this ram in 12gb will run slower than it will if I run 8gb because its not running in dual channel due to there only being 3 sticks not 4... I did look for a single 4gb stick of this ram but I cant find matching CAS speeds on a single 4gb stick anywhere. (I can find dual channel in a single 4gb stick but not triple channel)

So the plan was to just buy 2x 8gb and go with 16gb but if the information I was given is not valid then I will just keep the money to one side for a new GPU

[Bonebreaker777]

Odd cause even at Scan there is plenty of modules similar to yours.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-c...-9-24-xmp-150v -at first glance exactly like yours just unavailable at the moment.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-c...-9-24-xmp-150v -everything the same as the previous module and yours, only the colour of the passive is different (blue instead of black).

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-c...9-9-24-xmp-15v -or the third contender, internal specs the same but the passive is shorter.

If you buy any of these, you will have what you wanted (pretty much).

[kalniel]

I know bits about computers but not hugely indepth when it comes to all the fiddly hardware information! (hence the reason for asking the question)

And hence the reason for my asking what symptoms you were actually experiencing

I was told that running this ram in 12gb will run slower than it will if I run 8gb because its not running in dual channel due to there only being 3 sticks not 4...

Ah so it's probably running fine, just you fear it's slower than it could be. Two counters:
1) modern memory controllers and motherboards are quite clever, and it may be possible to interleave banks on the same physical stick of RAM, so you may already be running dual channel. To check, you could run a simple memory bandwidth-sensitive benchmark like super_pi first with three sticks, and then with two and see what the synthetic difference is. But that leads onto..
2) Even *if* you can show a significant synthetic difference in performance, think what your performance gain for the money is. Try a real world (game) benchmark 3 sticks vs 2. Then consider what else you could get for the increase in money, as mentioned, putting the money to a (better) GPU is likely to give you better performance increases.

[Bonebreaker777]

Wouldn't be easier for him to just buy a additional module and be done with it?
But I am curious as well about the synchronization performance drop while using 3 modules instead of 2, both in synthetic and real life applications. I would say without looking up that it will be minimal to none.

[kalniel]

Wouldn't be easier for him to just buy a additional module and be done with it?

As opposed to doing a quick few tests to discover if you need to buy anything or not? No, I don't think just buying something regardless is the easier option

[Bonebreaker777]

Well one does require a input of effort, the second requires input of money (only).
Let's see how he will proceed.