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1033mhz 8gb ram vs 1600mgz 4gb ram

J

jhyt89

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 14, 2012
11
0
Hi, I recently purchased crucial ram (1033mhz 8gb) to replace the stock 4gb 1600mhz ram of my macbook pro 13 inch 2012 i5 2.5ghz. I ran geekbench and these are the results:

with 4gb ram 1600mhz :

Geekbench score 6829
Processor Integer performance 5033
Processor floating point performance 9089
Memory performance 6263
Memory bandwidth performance 6344


with 8gb 1033mhz :

Geekbench score 6671
Processor Integer performance 5043
Processor floating point performance 9120
Memory performance 5782
Memory bandwidth performance 5578

Can someone explain why I get a lower geekbench score with more ram? Thanks.
 
Memory-related Terms:

RAM: Stands for Random Access Memory; this is what most people call the little sticks of memory that you put into your motherboard. Also known as simply memory. RAM is extremely high-speed memory that your computer can store temporarily needed data in for quick access by the program that needs it. If computers had to use slow hard drives for this, computing would be much less efficient. Because of the design, this memory is fast but very expensive and requires electricity to maintain data;that's why we separate it from long-term data storage (we use Hard Drives for that.).

Mhz: Memory speed is measured in Mhz much like processor speed is. Without going into detail, the general rule is that more Mhz = more overall speed. This is contingent upon processor speed and there is a point where memory becomes so fast that we can't actually perceive the difference if it's pushed higher.


Does Memory Speed Make A Difference?

From a benchmark point of view, it can make a small difference. Tests have shown marginal increases in certain tasks when comparing 1066Mhz DDR3 RAM to 1333Mhz DDR3, 1600Mhz DDR3 and 1800Mhz DDR3.

Bear in mind that increased RAM speeds and capacities usually mean higher latencies as it's harder to make the ram Faster, Bigger AND keep the latency times down. You'll have to find a good balance.

From a person's point of view, it hardly makes any difference at all. The amount of increase is so small that it's almost never perceivable. Would you be able to tell the difference between a task that takes 0.10 seconds and a task that takes 0.05 seconds? Of course not. Even though the second one is twice as fast, they both happen so quickly that you would never be able to tell the difference.
 
thanks for the reply. but the difference in the benchmark is staggering!
 
There's a difference between memory capacity and memory clock speed.


  • Memory capacity determines how many tasks you can run simultaneously. With more RAM, you'll be able to have more apps open side by side. So, 8GB is vastly superior than 4GB in that respect.

  • Memory clock speed determines how quickly the content can be loaded to and offloaded from, memory. That, however, depends more on disk speed and CPU/GPU power than on RAM. So, the difference between 1600MHz and 1333MHz is not that major.

Still, I'd recommend using the proper RAM with any system which, in your case, is the 1600MHz RAM. If you need 8GB, get 8GB 1600MHz RAM, even though it's a bit more expensive.
 
T5BRICK said:
Was the price difference between 2x4GB 1033MHz vs 1600MHz really that much?
Click to expand...

i bought from amazon and they didn't have 1600mhz. tbh, i didn't even know there was a difference between the speeds.
 
jhyt89 said:
Hi, I recently purchased crucial ram (1033mhz 8gb) to replace the stock 4gb 1600mhz ram of my macbook pro 13 inch 2012 i5 2.5ghz. I ran geekbench and these are the results:

with 4gb ram 1600mhz :

Geekbench score 6829
Processor Integer performance 5033
Processor floating point performance 9089
Memory performance 6263
Memory bandwidth performance 6344


with 8gb 1033mhz :

Geekbench score 6671
Processor Integer performance 5043
Processor floating point performance 9120
Memory performance 5782
Memory bandwidth performance 5578

Can someone explain why I get a lower geekbench score with more ram? Thanks.
Click to expand...

From your note, it seems that the slow ram ( 1033 mhz ) is the same speed or slower than the fast ram. That is what I would expect as the hardware may not be able to fully utilize the extra performance of the fast ram under all circumstances.

You will likely not see any speed improvement from tests like geekbench from more ram as they do not test that. They test ram speed only.
 
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Difference should be no more than $20 at most. RAM capacity will generally be better than 266mhz increase in clock speed.
 
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