"It's evil 2133mhz Memory...." Or why we suggest 1600mhz or *gasp* 1333mhz Memory for most customers

I had the following conversation earlier today with Chris, one of our staff. As you can see, neither of us are a huge fan of high frequency memory! 

So why do we strongly suggest that most customers avoid exotic memory such as 1866mhz and above? Well, the short answer, is because it makes very little performance difference, is not worth the price, and often causes a lot of compatability issues. 

Quoting from the excellent SandyBridge memory performance article over on The Tech Report: 

Although there are certainly cases where pairing Sandy Bridge processors with low-latency or high-frequency memory can yield impressive gains, it’s hard to find a common desktop application or game whose performance improves enough to justify the additional expense.

Definitely head over and read the rest of the article. Basically, assuming that you aren’t an insane overclocker, aren’t running an esoteric, heavily memory bandwidth dependent application, and aren’t aiming to set benchmarking records, high speed memory is a waste of money. And it’s quite a bit of money:

  

R2642 for 8gb of 2133mhz Kingston Hyper-X. Now sticking to the same brand and series (Hyper-X with the tall heatsinks), we can get 8gb of DDR3 1600mhz for R1261.56: 

That’s a R1300 saving! Which is a huge difference - it’s much better to spend that extra cash on a faster GPU, a bigger HDD, a small SSD for your boot drive, or just keep it in the bank for your next upgrade. 

Secondly, seperate to the price, we have had *major* compatability issues with high frequency memory. One of the components we have with the highest return rate is 1866mhz and above memory. Howcome? Well, to be honest, most customers who buy high speed memory buy it without realising the kind of hassles it can cause. They want plug and play simplicity, but this type of memory is generally aimed at overclockers, and requires a certain amount of finessing in order to get it to work properly. This is especially the case with X58 (Socket 1366 systems), although Sandybridge 1155 and Socket 1156 systems can also cause headaches. 

Now personally, I don’t mind the odd computer related headache if it means I’m getting better performance. But putting up with finicky memory for the sake of 0% performance increase? That’s not for me! 

I know this is a contentious issue, so definitely give me your feedback in the comments - I’d love to hear it! 

Update: Another article to read from Bit-Tech. They are slightly more bullish on high-frequency memory (they say 1866 is worth it, which I disagree with), but it’s still an article worth reading.