Ivy Bridge RAM Speed and Base Clock Info

[[XC] Oj101]

Ivy Bridge is the upcoming “tick” in Intel’s product range, a 22 nm shrink which is due 1Q2012. Sources close to Intel have revealed that RAM support will be up to an official DDR3-2133, with motherboard manufacturers offering up to around DDR3-3000. The official support on Sandy Bridge only goes as high as DDR3-1333, so this is quite a large jump...

Source

[Manicdan]

i hope no one flips out if i believe the platform will be dead before ddr3-3000 even comes out, lol

[slaveondope]

Give me 22nm cpu and 28nm gpu 40/45nm is so 2009. Now what to do with all that bandwidth

I believe the claims seeing as ddr4 isn't due until ~2014? and we've seen some road maps for ddr3 up to 3000mhz if I'm not mistaken.

[qcmadness]

SandyBridge could not even utilize more than DDR3-1333, I doubt how Intel will utilize DDR3-2133 in IvyBridge...

[eXa]

huh? what do you mean?

[LexDiamonds]

huh? what do you mean?

There have been several articles written about Sandy Bridges lack of performance increase with faster and/or lower latency RAM. DDR3-1600 seems to be the sweetspot even with prices ridiculously low. Even if there are tweaks in Ivy, I just cant see the need to suddenly need 3000mhz DIMMs....

[eXa]

uhm? have you seen many 1866/2133 tests?

[G.Foyle]

Processors officially support whatever JEDEC approves of at the moment. Sandy, Gulftowns etc could support more than DDR-1333, but such was the highest official speed. Now that DDR3-2133 is approved everything will support it.

[hokiealumnus]

Anandtech just did one recently: Sandy Bridge Memory Scaling: Choosing the Best DDR3. I can see the value with memory kits as closely priced as they are now. He said in the review there was a $34 difference between the lowest and highest-end kits he looked at, then suggests putting that money into a GPU. $34 isn't going to do much to upgrade a GPU, so may as well get better memory IMHO, but to each their own.

[chispy]

Thanks for the info

[bamtan2]

$34 isn't going to do much to upgrade a GPU, so may as well get better memory IMHO

$34 will do more for a GPU than system RAM, that was the point of that comment. if faster memory speed was needed that much I think it would have been advancing quicker. it lags other semiconductors...

[Manicdan]

it depends on how much you spent on your gpu already too, if your in the 150$ range, 34$ is alot of gpu power, if your in the 500$ range it might change nothing.

[eXa]

And if you dont game, more money into gpu wont do much :p

[zanzabar]

i like the return of buss multiplyer switching, it made things way more interesting with the old p2/p3 and socketA days.

$34 will do more for a GPU than system RAM, that was the point of that comment. if faster memory speed was needed that much I think it would have been advancing quicker. it lags other semiconductors...

dont forget that its also quad channel and the per core bandwidth need wont be going up, so its optimized for jdec.

[xlink]

Anandtech just did one recently: Sandy Bridge Memory Scaling: Choosing the Best DDR3. I can see the value with memory kits as closely priced as they are now. He said in the review there was a $34 difference between the lowest and highest-end kits he looked at, then suggests putting that money into a GPU. $34 isn't going to do much to upgrade a GPU, so may as well get better memory IMHO, but to each their own.

for the average user with an IGP or a $50-150 card it can.

[Starscream]

it depends on how much you spent on your gpu already too, if your in the 150$ range, 34$ is alot of gpu power, if your in the 500$ range it might change nothing.

True its benefit mostly depends on the price range your looking at and what your gonna do with it.
Butt if your working with a tight budget those few bucks might enable you to buy a better brand. With better cooling or a better bundle.

[Starscream]

Sad Panda

[Manicdan]

True its benefit mostly depends on the price range your looking at and what your gonna do with it.
Butt if your working with a tight budget those few bucks might enable you to buy a better brand. With better cooling or a better bundle.

34$ is how much an OK heatsink costs that lets you OC much higher with silence, it can do ALOT of things if you dont need a hair more bandwidth
i like articles like that where people think about cost rather than super powered PCs

[GoldenTiger]

it depends on how much you spent on your gpu already too, if your in the 150$ range, 34$ is alot of gpu power, if your in the 500$ range it might change nothing.

Definitely. If you're already on high-end specs, then the 3-4% from 2133mhz C9 DDR3 over say, 1333mhz C9-C11, is a nice bonus for the $30.

[PatRaceTin]

hmmmm if bclk restriction as sandy

106-107 BCLK is maximum i can reach with normal cooling

[hokiealumnus]

34$ is how much an OK heatsink costs that lets you OC much higher with silence, it can do ALOT of things if you dont need a hair more bandwidth
i like articles like that where people think about cost rather than super powered PCs

it depends on how much you spent on your gpu already too, if your in the 150$ range, 34$ is alot of gpu power, if your in the 500$ range it might change nothing.

Aye, both of you are absolutely correct. I suppose I was thinking about the people that will be buying higher-end components to start with. Plus I'm admittedly somewhat of a RAM geek and enjoy tinkering with it. However, I almost always leave it at stock for 24/7 operation, so the increases do make a difference that's worth $30 to me personally.

[Mungri]

The real world performance difference outside of benchmarks between 1333 Mhz and 2133 Mhz DDR3 would be less than 1%.

The only thing that is nice about faster memory is overclocking it and sharing your benchmark results. But unlike CPU and GPU, it wont make any difference in everyday PC tasks.

uhm? have you seen many 1866/2133 tests?

And if you dont game, more money into gpu wont do much :p

And unless you run nothing but run benchmarks 24/7, faster ram wont do anything at all for you.

The main reason why faster ram benefits sandybridge so much is because it is only dual channel. The gains from faster memory on X58 are negligible, and there will be even smaller a difference with quad channel - even 1066 Mhz ram in Quad Channel would smoke 3000 Mhz in dual channel, and the bandwidth gains from faster ram in triple and dual channel will be completely bottlenecked by the rest of the PC.

[BeepBeep2]

The real world performance difference outside of benchmarks between 1333 Mhz and 2133 Mhz DDR3 would be less than 1%.

The only thing that is nice about faster memory is overclocking it and sharing your benchmark results. But unlike CPU and GPU, it wont make any difference in everyday PC tasks.






And unless you run nothing but run benchmarks 24/7, faster ram wont do anything at all for you.

The main reason why faster ram benefits sandybridge so much is because it is only dual channel. The gains from faster memory on X58 are negligible, and there will be even smaller a difference with quad channel - even 1066 Mhz ram in Quad Channel would smoke 3000 Mhz in dual channel, and the bandwidth gains from faster ram in triple and dual channel will be completely bottlenecked by the rest of the PC.

1066 x 4 = 4264
3000 x 2 = 6000
2133 x 2 = 4264

Effectively Dual Channel 2133 = 1066 Quad Channel

[eXa]

The real world performance difference outside of benchmarks between 1333 Mhz and 2133 Mhz DDR3 would be less than 1%.

The only thing that is nice about faster memory is overclocking it and sharing your benchmark results. But unlike CPU and GPU, it wont make any difference in everyday PC tasks.






And unless you run nothing but run benchmarks 24/7, faster ram wont do anything at all for you.

The main reason why faster ram benefits sandybridge so much is because it is only dual channel. The gains from faster memory on X58 are negligible, and there will be even smaller a difference with quad channel - even 1066 Mhz ram in Quad Channel would smoke 3000 Mhz in dual channel, and the bandwidth gains from faster ram in triple and dual channel will be completely bottlenecked by the rest of the PC.

Uhm... no. You are wrong.

First, let me just say that i dont disagree that spending the extra money used for faster ram might gain more if spent elsewhere (depending on setup ofc). But claiming that faster ram do not benefit sandybridge at all, or saying that from 1333 ro 2133 is less than 1% is wrong.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mem...idge-ddr3.html
Take a look at:
Winrar 4.0, Photoshop CS5, Metro 2033, F1 2010, CIV 5,
Going from 1333 CL9 to 2133 CL9 gains much more than 1%, even from 1333 CL7 to 2133 CL9 gains much more than 1%

Check this out too.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mem...sandy-bridge/1

And as BeepBeep2 pointed out, Quad 1066 wont beat dual 3000 (quad 1600 would tho)

Edit: And X58 is besides the point, i replied to sandy bridge statements....

[Mungri]

But will Ivy Bridge see the same gains as SB does from ram clock, or would it be closer to X58?

The gains in the gaming results in that review you posted are still small though.

The conclusion in the second article you posted says:

Conclusion of what to Buy
If you're the type of person that runs dozens of applications all at once, then a higher memory frequency does help, particularly when you're running demanding software. However, our testing shows that memory rated at over 1,866MHz doesn't give much extra performance. Worse still, in some applications only 1,333MHz memory gives a performance penalty, meaning that 1,600MHz memory is fine.

If you're doing anything other than heavy multi-tasking - this goes for gamers in particular - then a 1,600MHz or 1,866MHz kit is plenty. You could opt for CL8, as we saw some advantage in the video encoding test, but we wouldn't obsess over this factor, especially if a CL9 kit is much cheaper.

I was wrong with the differences between dual and quad channel speeds, but increased ram speed / bandwidth still hits a ceiling after which there is hardly any gain - 1866 Mhz for SB, and for X58 theres hardly any difference in most tests over 1333 Mhz.

I cant really comment on Ivy Bridge yet since we dont have any figures for it yet, but I dont think there will be much difference.