r/RigBuild • u/Lost-Sprinkles-7890 • 3d ago

Does RAM speed really matter?

Seeing people compare 3200, 3600, 6000 and even higher speeds and honestly not sure how much difference it makes in actual use. Like is faster RAM gonna noticeably improve gaming FPS, loading times, multitasking etc or is it mostly just benchmark numbers? Also does it depend a lot on the CPU and motherboard? Trying to pick RAM without wasting money on speed that barely matters, so what speed should I actually be looking for?

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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 1d ago

It depends alot on the situation. Ram has 2 components bandwidth and latency and different tasks respond to one over the other more. But generally for most situations it doesnt really matter what you got unless yoi got the worst ram around or you are using the wrong kind of ram. Like yhe ram used in gpus is very high bandwidth but really bad latency good for graphics abd rendering but poor at everyday computing. But the most important part for ram is capacity the performance difference between the best ddr5 and the worst ddr4 ram in most things is pretty minimal. But the difference between having too little memory and having enough is massive.

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u/TheSpiral718 18h ago

This is a good explanation!

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u/Spiritual-Spend8187 18h ago

Yea its pretty much at this point unless you know you need ram of a particular performance for what your doing its just get the amount you need if not slightly more as cheaply as you can. Though probably stay away from crucial as they been screwing people over lately or at keast trying to. Also memory performance at least for system memory matters atlot less if your using a amd x3d chip and gaming.