Gadgetory

already almost half years parsons intel releases latest six generation core microarchitecture codename skylake unfortunately supply of the unlock 6700 KS 6600 k hasn't been great and despite prices rising well above the MSRP this hasn't squashed demand it's believed that intel still struggling to improve manufacturing yield on as late as 14 nanometer process the very process upon which these skylake chips are built it's actually hard to believe major online retailers such as Newegg and amazon and moving these things at all with prices currently more than 20% over the MSRP further down the food chain we find that the non k processors such as the core i5 6400 6500 and core i3 are selling at the MSRP making them much more attractive options especially now that they too can be overclocked given current pricing and the recent ability to overclock any skylake processor we see no reason to buy the 6600 K and 6700 K processors they're for those in the budget looking at moving into Intel's latest LGA 1151 platform be wise to invest in a motherboard that supports non k overclocking and pick up a processor such as the 6400 or 6500 the next step is to pair the right ddr4 memory with the new skylake processor and with so many options available this can be a daunting task jumping over to new AG and punching in ddr4 into the search box immediately brings back 799 results so time to narrow things down a little assuming you're after a gigabyte kit made up of two four gigabyte modules which we believe is the sweet spot right now then you instantly reduce your options to just 123 prices star just $40 for a basic ddr4 2133 kit and go all the way up to $400 for I imagine isn't impossible to justify g.skill ddr4 4266 kid running timings of the slack as an air support team I've put together a table that breaks down the various memory speeds that we'll be testing along with their lowest and typical asking prices finding ddr4 memory clocked at just sixteen hundred and 1866 megahertz isn't easy and with 21 33 megahertz memory price so low recommend avoiding it anyhow starting at just $40 for nine gigabyte ddr4 2133 kit isn't terribly expensive though just five to ten dollars more lens 24 hundred megahertz memory from there spending an extra five to ten dollars each stare pliers you a little over a ten percent increase in memory frequency it is it worth it and where do you reach a point of diminishing returns that's what we plan to find out for testing we'll be using the 6700 K rather than an overclocked tune on K processor for the simple fact that it allows us to test at standard memory speeds overclocking generally results in non-standard memory speeds our core i7 6400 overclocked for example forces to run our ddr4 3000 memory at 29 86 megahertz for example so rather than confuse the issue with a heap of non standard frequencies we'll be testing the 6700 K at nine of the more common ddr4 memory speeds ranging from 1333 megahertz up to thirty six hundred megahertz now keep in mind zdi four does officially start at 1600 megahertz the resulting figures will still be relevant for those looking at purchasing and much cheaper core i5 processor to overclock the snot out of it the focus will be exclusively on gaming performance and to extract the most frames we'll be using the geforce gtx 980ti ddr4 1333 doesn't exist but we wanted to test at this low frequency to provide a better overall picture of how the sky processor scale likewise you can also scrub our ddr4 1600 and 1866 as these are never cost-effective and availability is poor so then starting at ddr4 2133 we find a memory bandwidth of just 27 gigabytes per second with our 6700 K processor moving to 20 400 megahertz memory improves the memory bandwidth to thirty point seven gigabytes per second we saw another big jump to ddr4 2666 memory at thirty five point nine gigabytes per second the jump to ddr4 3000 was also quite large as the bandwidth increased to 4.1 gigabytes per second moving to 3200 megahertz only provide an additional two gigabytes per second and the same was family going from 3200 megahertz to 3600 megahertz Assassin's Creed syndicate isn't really fazed by the system's memory speed and we seem much the same performance from ddr4 2133 all the way to ddr4 3600 the frame time data suggests much the same though the lowest official spec memory being ddr4 1600 does come a significant performance impact here like Assassin's Creed we find the memory performance as little impact on Batman Arkham Knight frame rates in fact even less of an impact is seen here is ddr4 1333 delivered similar performance to ddr4 3600 the frame time data reveals a similar performance trend as well here we have yet another game in battlefield 4 that shows no real advantage to using higher clock ddr4 memory the frame time data also shows us that it's really only the 1333 mega Hertz configuration that shows a mile drop-off in performance variety finally we see some reasonable gains of performance when using higher frequency memory that said the gains run out at around the 20 400 megahertz mark suggesting this is the sweet spot for black ops 3 looking at the frame time data we see that the ddr4 2666 is the sweet spot offering a reasonable gain over the 20 400 megahertz memories back when we first benchmark fallout 4 using ddr4 3,000 memory we noticed a massive drop in performance when using slower memory modules such as those designed to work at 2133 and 2400 megahertz it seems for f4 can't get enough of the high speed memory and we continue to see solid gains all the way to 3,000 mega Hertz the Train time data also shows a continued improvement in performance that the memory frequency is scaled up Grand Theft Auto 5 reaches its limits with ddr4 2400 memory just as black ops 3 deal the frame time data also shows little difference between ddr4 1866 and ddr4 3600 memory like fallout 4 we see a constant performance improvement in Just Cause 3 as the memory frequency is ramped up that said the games aren't quite as extreme although the performance does continue to climb there's just a 5 frame per second on average friends between ddr4 1866 ddr4 3600 frame time data reveals a similar performance trended and again we're gamers completely get away with 1866 megahertz memory interestingly when testing with Rainbow six siege we find that while the average frame rate does increase from ddr4 1333 to ddr4 1866 the minimum frame rate remains much the same the frame time data suggests there's very little to be gained in Ramah succeed when using the higher clock ddr4 memory Star Wars Battlefront wasn't a game that we expected to see much in the way of performance gains from using higher clocked memory this is exactly what we found shockingly there's almost no difference between ddr4 1333 and ddr4 3,600 memory in this title frame time data also confirms there's nothing to be gained from running high-speed memory in battlefront finally we have the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt and here we see reasonable performance gains all the way up to 2400 megahertz where we eventually reach an average of 82 frames per second going all the way up to 36 hundred megahertz next is just one extra yes the frame time data also suggests the dunia for 2400 is the sweet spot in The Witcher 3 long before I started Hardware unboxed I played around with memory frequencies and timings on Intel's Haswell platform back then I found that ddr3 1866 was the sweet spot though as the platform evolved ddr3 2400 eventually began to show reasonable performance gains in a number of games and applications for the most part the memory frequencies won't make much of a difference for gamers and the bog-standard ddr4 2133 will serve you well that said of the ten games tested six of them saw a worthwhile advantage when using 24 hundred megahertz memory just two games benefited from even faster memory and those two games of Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3 all at four in particular saw strong gains all the way up to 3200 megahertz so that's something to be aware of especially if you play this game a lot although not all games showed a performance game when going from ddr4 2133 to ddr4 2400 with just $5 separating these memory kids in the 8 gigabyte capacity We strongly suggest going with the faster memory 20 400 megahertz should really be the base ddr4 clock speed for the most part going you about 2400 megahertz is necessary and we found that DDR for 3,000 kids cost an average $10 more which obviously isn't a lot of money especially when you're likely going to be investing well over $300 in the cpu / motherboard combo anyway going beyond 3000 megahertz we've reached the point of diminishing returns for sure prices increased sharply and this nerville extra performance to be had there forward depending on the retail price we recommend a me fruitcake clocked at or between 2400 and 3000 megahertz which for a dual channel kit should set you back anywhere from $45 to $65 thanks for joining me for another installment of hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and if you've got any questions at all please hit me up on the forum at Hardware on box comm or in the comments below don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you next time