Kaby Lake / Z270 RAM sweetspot

[Django]

Thinking about an i5-7600K or i7-7700K build on Z270 M/B dedicated to flightsims and for VR in the future.

Q1) Based on browsing users system specs on several flightsim forums am I right in thinking the current Kaby Lake "sweetspot" for RAM is:

16MB DDR4-3200???

Q2) Is anyone really going to need more than 16GB for current flightsims (anyone running the above sims with 8GB and no OOMs)?

Q3) Would VR need more system RAM?

[David OC]

Thinking about an i5-7600K or i7-7700K build on Z270 M/B dedicated to flightsims and for VR in the future.

Q1) Based on browsing users system specs on several flightsim forums am I right in thinking the current Kaby Lake "sweetspot" for RAM is:

16MB DDR4-3200???

Q2) Is anyone really going to need more than 16GB for current flightsims (anyone running the above sims with 8GB and no OOMs)?

Q3) Would VR need more system RAM?

 

 

I just finished a kaby 7700k build with 16GB @ 3466mhz XMP

 

I will upgrade this to 32mb (2x16GB) better off with two stick kit, more stable apparently for overclocking.

 

From what I can see DCS cannot use all 16BM because of system resources, if you have more DCS will use it, the more optimize DCS becomes the more ram it might use? I would go for 32GB to be on the safe side these days.

 

Discussion:

 

BitMaster's post can be found here

 

8GB is good ?????? seriously ???

 

Go try playing on a populated server and then report back if you still think 8GB is enough.

 

You actually outclassed your opinion to null value with that statement.

 

In contrast to most others saying NO to 16GB+ I have tested almost any config between 6GB and 32GB possible on several i7 machines.

 

With 8GB you will have severe trouble joining online servers..and yes..it works with 16GB, I have used that config for 2 years but I can clearly see that the system can use up to 8-10GB more RAM IF there is RAM to spare. I am NOT saying 32GB is mandatory, just that "some" of it is used for DCS as well. With 16GB total your system just cant use 16GB when gaming, THAT SIMPLE.

 

If those screenshots and YT videos I made dont convince than those guys better dont ask for advise at all as they never wanted to listen 1st place.

 

BTW shab249: If you had spent 1 minute looking at the scrteenshots you would actually see the System uses 16GB while in DCS, I have been up to 22GB on some dense servers. I have a 90min YT video that never drops below 16gigs in use. So dont say" Monitor it and you see it wont use more RAM"...that is PLAIN NOT TRUE !

 

I have recently built a server with 16GB, yes, cause I now it will never need more. I am not the "buy it all in gold" guy.

 

And yes, I use 32GB, I could use 128GB easily as I do VMware every day, it's just too expensive for my usage but I could make use of it, along with 16 cores etc..

 

Just because you dont see why doesnt mean others have to stay in your blind spot !

Edited June 11, 2017 by David OC

[Konovalov]

I have always overclocked my rigs and for that reason I have felt more comfortable with only populating 2 dims slots or in the case of my ageing X58 system, three slots instead of six. And with this in mind I would target a 32GB 2 stick kit. As far as RAM speed go with the fastest you can afford with 3200 being the current sweet spot.

[BitMaster]

The IMC sweetspot is at 3600mhz, all 7th gen should be capable of this speed. Higher may work but depends more on the silicon lottery.

 

Those 16GB modules only go till 3200 afaik, any faster and the biggest module is 8Gb for now, again afair. Over time 16gb sticks will emerge with faster speeds.

I would again go for 3600 or even faster.

 

Overclocking the RAM is no good idea if you also oc the cpu, thats why i would by 3600 right away and dont oc them sticks further.

 

 

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[StefVR]

No gskill trident z for example have 4*16gb 3600mhz kit which i strongly consider at the moment

[Django]

3200 being the current sweet spot

 

The IMC sweetspot is at 3600mhz

 

Anyone care to suggest the typical performance difference between these speeds?

[Konovalov]

Anyone care to suggest the typical performance difference between these speeds?

 

 

 

Just to clarify I was talking about price sweet spot, not performance. Above 3200 speeds and the price starts to jump significantly.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[BitMaster]

Those prices are insane right now and no cure available :(

 

 

One reason why I took 2666 with the R5 last week ( Office only )

[BitMaster]

Anyone care to suggest the typical performance difference between these speeds?

 

They are marginal but there.

 

It really depends on what you do with your PC.

 

Look at 2133 vs. 3200 = 1.5 the bandwidth and 4133 ( Pilotasso has those monster sticks :) )

is round about TWICE as fast.

 

I dont run VR but many who have say that more cores and fast RAM helped them to fight performance/stutter/jitter issues.

 

I use TiR5-Pro and I have no issues. Tbh, I would have to check with my RAM at 2133 if it matters, I haven't yet.

 

Bandwidth matters from that point on when you either need all that data as fast as possible

or little data A LOT FASTER ( the case for VR and TiR ). 3200 or even 3600MHz RAM will pump the same amount of data in 2/3 of the time compared to 2133.

 

When you do office work, there is zero "felt" difference, same for encoding. You can measure the increase with test apps, it's somewhere in the 1-digit area, like 2% faster.

 

What really really matters is the reduced latency, the time the CPU waits and waits for the DRAM to send the data. Some games seem to like that fast RAM, I personally think DCS does too.

 

For my gaming rigs I always buy fast and good RAM from the top tier, for peace of mind if it does matter and for the looks too I have to admit. I had LED RAM with my Pentium 4 back then and it looked awesome. This time round I went with the fastest that I could still afford and that would work with the board and comes as a 32GB pack.

 

I would personally not buy 2133 or 2400 for a gaming rig unless your budget is very tight.

[toutenglisse]

Performance difference between ram speed in dcs : https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=157374 the nice Tiborrr benchmarks (3600 Mhz not tested but you see the gain between the different speeds til 3200 Mhz)

It works with 16Gb (recommended by ED) even in Vr - although 32Gb allows you to desactivate virtual memory so all stuff that DCS put in cache is in the 32 Gb ram (access speed 80 times quicker than my ssd - 40Gb/s versus 0.5Gb/s)

Last - more sticks (4x8Gb sticks for 4 ports) give better bandwith while less sticks (2x16Gb sticks for 4 ports) seems more stable for higher OC of ram ? according to the benchmarkers.

[BitMaster]

..cut

 

Last - more sticks (4x8Gb sticks for 4 ports) give better bandwith while less sticks (2x16Gb sticks for 4 ports) seems more stable for higher OC of ram ? according to the benchmarkers.

 

Not quite right, you cannot say this per se, what matters if 128bit, 192bit or 256bit data bandwidth is the followig:

 

 

4 sticks vs. 2 sticks on a TWO-Channel(128bit) CPU is EXACTLY the same speed, if anything then it is slower by 0.001% or so

 

4 sticks vs 2 sticks on a FOUR channel(256bit) CPU is TWICE the speed, there you are right.

 

Z77, Z97, Z170, Z270, AMD's X370 are all TWO channel chipsets and CPUs

 

X58 ( tripple channel, 192bit ), X99, X299 are FOUR channel chipsets and CPUs.

 

 

One stick alone is ALWAYS 64bit bandwidth

Two sticks are 128bit...IF...you pu them in the CORRECT slots ( A2 + B2 usually for 2-dimm setup )

 

3 sticks are 128bit for A2+B2 and 64bit for the 3rd stick ( A1 )

 

4 sticks can be 128 or 256bit, depending on the chipset. If it is a dual-channel chipsets you will have ALL slots occupied and run still 128bit whereas a X99/X299/X399 chipset have FOUR-channel chipsets and EIGHT slots, so it will shift into 256bit with 4 modules and you still have 4 empty slots to add more RAM, not more bandwidth. Even with 8 modules the four channel chipsets remain in 256bit bandwidth.

 

Read the Manual !!!

 

I forgot his name, but recently I wrote exactly the same and 1 pilot in here read it and said: DAMN, I have had them in the wrong slots for years !! ...... ( A1+B1 = 64 bit ), he changed the slots and moved to 128bit transfer rate :)

[toutenglisse]

yep you're right my bad

[Django]

OK so consumer "emotions" aside, what are peoples recommendations for brands? Which have good warranties?

[toutenglisse]

RipJaws ! (point)Gskills ! Dominator ! Vengeance ! it's all about emotions.....

[BitMaster]

OK so consumer "emotions" aside, what are peoples recommendations for brands? Which have good warranties?

 

Those in your QVL are the ones you should buy if you dont know much about RAM.

[FragBum]

Just an observation I have Win 10 with 32GB DDR4 and running Rift the system has allocated 15.5Gb of ram with DCS using about 5.3GB of ram, Rift 1.3GB, maybe 1GB for Chrome the rest is Windows.

 

So really you should consider 32GB as a base amount of RAM, keeping in mind more RAM means less page outs/ins and hence more CPU cycles for running DCS. :)

 

 

 

 

 

RipJaws ! (point)Gskills ! Dominator ! Vengeance ! it's all about emotions.....

 

You mean bling. ;)

[BitMaster]

Just an observation I have Win 10 with 32GB DDR4 and running Rift the system has allocated 15.5Gb of ram with DCS using about 5.3GB of ram, Rift 1.3GB, maybe 1GB for Chrome the rest is Windows.

 

So really you should consider 32GB as a base amount of RAM, keeping in mind more RAM means less page outs/ins and hence more CPU cycles for running DCS. :)

 

You mean bling. ;)

 

 

Exactly ! You understood what it takes and how to read the TaskManager Data.

 

Some read it but can't sort the actual information it gives.

 

MSI Afterburner is simpler in that aspect as it just shows the total amount in use and allocated and thus shows the real demand. By just taking the RAM amount of DCS in the process table you dont read the actual value. Many seem to misunderstad this circumstance.

 

You know, there are some that think 8GB is plenty and 16GB already a waste.

 

LoL

[FragBum]

Exactly ! You understood what it takes and how to read the TaskManager Data.

 

Some read it but can't sort the actual information it gives.

 

MSI Afterburner is simpler in that aspect as it just shows the total amount in use and allocated and thus shows the real demand. By just taking the RAM amount of DCS in the process table you dont read the actual value. Many seem to misunderstad this circumstance.

 

You know, there are some that think 8GB is plenty and 16GB already a waste.

 

LoL

 

Yep and it is not like it isn't reasonably cheap to put a decent amount of decent ram into a system for any nix these days. :thumbup:

 

8GB small USB drive

 

16GB Okay the SD cards for my camera (I need bigger ones)

 

Robert

[Django]

But does it really make sense to spend more on RAM than your CPU with a limited budget? E.g. on Amazon:

i5-7600K about £215

32GB DD4 3200 kit from about £230 to £290

[Django]

Just an observation I have Win 10 with 32GB DDR4... Rift 1.3GB

 

Was that while you were using the Rift in an application?

[FragBum]

Was that while you were using the Rift in an application?

 

Just DCS and the Oculus Home and maybe a Gig for Chrome the rest is Windows & baggage.

 

 

For me it's more the sweat spot for OS and swap file usage plus if you do other stuff that really multithreads more is "Usually" always better.

 

 

Anyway if your worried about the cost of the RAM get the 7700K if your gonna clock, just saying :P

 

 

Like BitMaster has currently, I have seen this CPU @ 5.1GHz and stable with SLI 1080 setup and running cool. :thumbup:

 

Although I'm not so keen to pop the heatsink interface off, but hey. :cry:

 

Yes I'm currently costing this build out. :helpsmilie:

[toutenglisse]

But does it really make sense to spend more on RAM than your CPU with a limited budget? E.g. on Amazon:

i5-7600K about £215

32GB DD4 3200 kit from about £230 to £290

 

Of course not.

A friend of mine said me about 32gb vs 16 that it is optimization of optimization..... lol and I agree with him.

If the same money can be put through device that make fps increasing than it should be.

When DCS engine struggle with high units number it's a cpu limitation... not ram. Idem with high graphic options and gpu...

If more ram is needed than system use ssd virtual memory so in this case 32gb help running with high velocity real ram instead of low velocity ssd virtual ram. (or even lower hdd virtual ram)

Amateur's point of view .... take with care ^^

edit : system always use virtual memory for cached data but with 32gb you can easily desactivate win10 virtual memory on hard storage so it's all handled by fast ram without consuming total amount.

Edited June 16, 2017 by toutenglisse

[FragBum]

Of course not.

A friend of mine said me about 32gb vs 16 that it is optimization of optimization..... lol and I agree with him.

If the same money can be put through device that make fps increasing than it should be.

When DCS engine struggle with high units number it's a cpu limitation... not ram. Idem with high graphic options and gpu...

If more ram is needed than system use ssd virtual memory so in this case 32gb help running with high velocity real ram instead of low velocity ssd virtual ram. (or even lower hdd virtual ram)

Amateur's point of view .... take with care ^^

 

The problem is that win os and nix os freak when the ram numbers get "low" and if you want to use that

 

Bus Speed 8 GT/s DMI3

 

and likely

 

Max Memory Bandwidth 34.1 GB/s

 

Shuffling the same shyt back and forth between ram and storage, go ahead be my guest. Also as I can barely get past 16% CPU utilisation as I see it the limitations are in system throughput and graphics. :smilewink:

 

YMMV :thumbup:

Edited June 16, 2017 by FragBum
typo s

[BitMaster]

The memory bandwidth is SIGNIFICANTLY higher with faster RAM, and low latency adds the icing on top.

[FragBum]

The memory bandwidth is SIGNIFICANTLY higher with faster RAM, and low latency adds the icing on top.

 

Nice. :thumbup: