Ram OR overclock?!

[Deleted]

Hey guys, I was talking with a friend the other day who knows more indepth knowlege than what I do with hardware. (I have an advanced knowlege, I'd say he was at a professional level compared to me) and we were talking, I was thinking of adding another 4gb (2x2gb) sticks to my rig (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...=8&subcat=1517) and he basically said on my board I will have a choice of an OC or the extra RAM due to the memory controller.

My specs

• Gigabyte P55-USB3 Rev 2.0
• 4gb XMS 3 (same as what was linked above)
• Intel i5 760 CPU
• Corsair H70 cooler
• Nvidia GTX 460 1024mb

She's currently running a 4.1ghz overclock and I was just confused on how adding more RAM can limit my CPU on this board? any input? and would you be kind enough to explain it to me

Thanks

[Coldchaos]

The simple answer is to prevent bottle-necking you have to maintain a multiplier of the base bus speed for your ram. Problem is this could cause the need for excessive voltage which the components can't handle properly. Googling is going to give you a better answer then I can in a giant copy-pasta quote block.

[Icpie]

Short story, adding more DIMMs is going to make that OC harder to keep stable.

[Saithes]

The processor features an Integrated Memory Controller on the die. The more sticks and data width that the memory controller has to allocate out for, the more stress it will receive. Usually though the CPU's overclock isn't reduced too significantly (100-200MHz tops). It's more prominent in RAM with lower latencies and higher frequencies since it puts a higher amount of stress on the IMC. I'd say you should be fine at keeping 4GHz or so with running that RAM being the timings are high in comparison.

[Deleted]

Ok, thanks for the info, Still unsure if im going to add more RAM or not, going to see how SWTOR performs, I've yet to hit the magical "4gb" cap while gaming so I think I should be OK

[Deleted]

Honestly, If you're at 4GB already, you won't see much difference in performance for gaming. However, i'd still add the RAM personally, and go with a slightly lower overclock. Contrary to popular belief, 4 DIMM's isn't so threatening to an overclock as people make out, it just makes it a bit more difficult to get stable.

Apologies for bumping my old thread but you actually helped me decide on going for the extra RAM, I'll probly end up dropping my OC down to 3.8 and upping my vtt to around the 1.3 mark and dram upto 1.65 and dropping the memory ratio down to 4x, see how that works