RAM/CPU/FSB speed, AMD v Intel

Overheal

So I've gone and confused myself while daydreaming of my new PC build in the next couple weeks/months here (AMD has a big conference due next month, nVidia's newest offerings sound nice on paper, but aren't out yet, and I still am not fully over their GeForce 8xxx series fiasco). So I'm looking at Motherboards and RAM speeds and ermegerd, things have gotten quite a bit faster than I remember! When I built this PC my RAM was advertised at 667 Mhz, when I was gifted some bigger sticks @ work to get up to 16 GB I dropped down to 535 Mhz - Now you can buy RAM that pushes 4.7 Ghz. What the hek, world!

So I'm looking at CPU/RAM speef ratios since at this stage you can get RAM that is as fast, if not faster, than the CPU clock speed. When building, is it advantageous to look for RAM that matches, will it actually yield performance gains, or does it only need to be half speed since its DDR ie 'double data RAM?' Googling online just got me more confused, introducing the front side bus speed and overclocking multipliers.

I just wanna know what to look for. If I need 4.4 ghz DDR4 RAM for a 4.4 Ghz CPU so be it. As for AMD or CPU - I, guess, I am open to either this time. It's been a long while since Intel was fined for trying to unfairly squish AMD out of competition, and in some respects AMD had been outperforming Intel FWIH. But I'm also not in the budget to build a threadripper machine, nor do I really have a use case for that much multicore. The 1st gen TR4's are pretty much going clearance but not sure I wouldn't just want to stick with the newest bells and whistles from current gen CPUs and I'm hesitant to drop a lot of money on a motherboard that has an EOL socket. Looking on these benchmarks https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/ Intel and AMD seem fairly even, but then AMD supports some newer features on its chipsets right now like PCIe 4.0. I am certainly interested in trying out this new fangled em dot too SSD storage I hear so much about on the HAM radio these days, not sure if PCIe 4.0 is even required to achieve that, given I see there are some samsung SSDs that can crank out 3.5 GB/s read and write, which is a mind****.

So what do I do lads in terms of AMD/Intel and memory speeds?

Overheal

Lads the silence tells me this is a good question :P

Aodhan5000

With third gen Ryzen you probably want ddr4 3600mhz memory. Ryzen has infinity fabric that operates at 1800mhz and the 3600mhz ram will work at the best ratio with this. Some people buy 3200mhz memory and overclock it to 3600mhz though

ED E

Think you've missed the core bit - what are you trying to do?


For the most part even crap RAM is so fast as that you probably won't notice the difference between cheap and premium stuff. The only caveat is chips offering AMD onboard graphics ("APUs") as the GPU will utilize every Hz you give it, buy fast for that. If you're buying a discrete graphics card this isnt a concern.

Homelander

Yeah I agree with the above. No offense but the OP is just a load of verbal diarrhea! You're making this more complicated than it is.

Unless you're building a killer high-end machine there is zero point worrying about pci-e 4.0.

Best mainstream choice right now is the Ryzen 3600 and whatever board you can afford. You can get M2 equipped boards for as little as €50.

Overheal

Homelander wrote: »

Yeah I agree with the above. No offense but the OP is just a load of verbal diarrhea! You're making this more complicated than it is.

Unless you're building a killer high-end machine there is zero point worrying about pci-e 4.0.

Best mainstream choice right now is the Ryzen 3600 and whatever board you can afford. You can get M2 equipped boards for as little as €50.

Well I am looking for killer mid range - I don't know if it qualifies as prosumer if your budget is ~$1500. I will probably end up having a serious look at buying the Ryzen 4xxx series CPU that gets unveiled in 3 weeks and form a build around that, so I wanted to understand more about the memory speed ratios etc.

As for applications everything from gaming to workstation stuff, I do FEA, Solidworks, Matlab, as well, so apps that can be memory hogs and multitasking a lot else in the background. Graphics card is a given.

You're probably right about PCIe 4.0 but i'd take it if I can get it, my average machine lifespan is ~10 years so being a bit more futureproof on expansion cards in the future is not all that crazy to me (that said, I haven't been compelled to use any expansion cards on my current build, which I made sure had plenty of, for the time, cutting edge I/Os like USB 3 and gigabit ethernet natively). And, the current machine is still solid and will be "Player 2" in the house. This does have PCIe 2.0, I wouldn't have the first clue of knowing whether that bottlenecks a GPU though (currently using a Radeon R9 390)

yoyo

Moved over from Comp & Tech.

BloodBath

I'd hold out a bit longer. You've got a good budget there.

Wait for the new Ryzens and mid range Nvidia gpu's. I think the likes of solidworks prefers those over amd.

Probably got the budget for an 8 core next gen ryzen and a 3070.