1866MHz RAM

[tamag901]

Hi,

I currently have 16GB of 1600MHz RAM installed in my 2012 13" MBP (Intel HD 4000). Will upgrading to 1866MHz RAM improve frame rates in games?

Thanks

 

[keysofanxiety]

Your model has an i5-3210M (assuming you have the 2.5GHz model) which has a maximum supported memory speed of 1600MHz. So anything higher than that might have problems - might not even boot on your model, or could be underclocked. Nonetheless it won't make much of an impact anyway, even if it would work.

As the graphics card is shared with the chip, your best bet to improve your graphics framerate would be to:

- Upgrade to 16GB RAM (2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM) as this will increase VRAM size
- Upgrade to El Capitan (again increases VRAM size)

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Your model has an i5-3210M (assuming you have the 2.5GHz model) which has a maximum supported memory speed of 1600MHz. So anything higher than that might have problems - might not even boot on your model, or could be underclocked. Nonetheless it won't make much of an impact anyway, even if it would work.

As the graphics card is shared with the chip, your best bet to improve your graphics framerate would be to:

- Upgrade to 16GB RAM (2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM) as this will increase VRAM size
- Upgrade to El Capitan (again increases VRAM size)

Assuming he has kept up with updates I expect he is already at the maximum vram without a hack, it maxes out at 8GB installed memory 16GB makes no difference.

More importantly the vRam is unlikely to make any difference to framerates although textures etc may run a bit better the crappy GPU is what is holding his framerates back not the amount of RAM it accesses. Basically that is a poor card for gaming and nothing you can do will add anymore than 1 or 2 FPS.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Assuming he has kept up with updates I expect he is already at the maximum vram without a hack, it maxes out at 8GB installed memory 16GB makes no difference.

More importantly the vRam is unlikely to make any difference to framerates although textures etc may run a bit better the crappy GPU is what is holding his framerates back not the amount of RAM it accesses. Basically that is a poor card for gaming and nothing you can do will add anymore than 1 or 2 FPS.

Yeah good point matey, should've really added that even if you max the girl you won't be seeing much difference at all. Even an SSD might slightly benefit textures loading but nothing to significantly improve gaming performance.

So OP, you'd be better off just getting a console or building a gaming PC if you're serious about higher framerates.

 

[tamag901]

Yeah good point matey, should've really added that even if you max the girl you won't be seeing much difference at all. Even an SSD might slightly benefit textures loading but nothing to significantly improve gaming performance.

So OP, you'd be better off just getting a console or building a gaming PC if you're serious about higher framerates.

The problem is that I'm not that big of an AAA gamer, I mostly play Valve games and whatever FPS comes along from Aspyr, so I wouldn't make that much use of a console or a full fledged gaming PC.

 

[tamag901]

Assuming he has kept up with updates I expect he is already at the maximum vram without a hack, it maxes out at 8GB installed memory 16GB makes no difference.

More importantly the vRam is unlikely to make any difference to framerates although textures etc may run a bit better the crappy GPU is what is holding his framerates back not the amount of RAM it accesses. Basically that is a poor card for gaming and nothing you can do will add anymore than 1 or 2 FPS.

Yes, I'm already topped out at 1536MB of vRAM.

Not that the memory bandwidth is large enough to make use of it anyway...

 

[tamag901]

Your model has an i5-3210M (assuming you have the 2.5GHz model) which has a maximum supported memory speed of 1600MHz. So anything higher than that might have problems - might not even boot on your model, or could be underclocked. Nonetheless it won't make much of an impact anyway, even if it would work.

As the graphics card is shared with the chip, your best bet to improve your graphics framerate would be to:

- Upgrade to 16GB RAM (2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM) as this will increase VRAM size
- Upgrade to El Capitan (again increases VRAM size)

Yeah, I've already done both of those things... hasn't made much of a difference, unfortunately. Just thought I could eek just a bit more out of the iGPU.