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I recently bought two modules of 8G (16G total) Corsair Vengeance Series memory

Specs: 1600MHz CL11 DDR3.  
System Specs: i7 4770K to 4.0GHz 
ASUS GTX 770 
MSI Z87 ZMPOWER MAX

During most of the games I have played, the performance is really good. However, when I play PlanetSide2, the framerate sometimes drops to a level unplayable. I do realize that the game currently is poorly optimized for multicore CPUs, but some people have told me in-game that they even have steady 45-60 fps during big fights with an i5. And comparing the fps before and after I overclocked my CPU to 4.0Ghz reveals no significant improvement. So I suspect that it is the memory that is bottlenecking the performance.

First of all, do you agree?

Second, even if that's not the case for the game, would I benefit a lot and see some noticeable improvement over gaming performance if I switch out the 1600MHz CL11 memory and use memory of higher frequencies, like 1866 or 2000MHz +, with a lower CL like 8 or 9? Because I think CL11 might be too high at 1600MHz and will hold back my system.

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  • Isn't network speed a likely bottleneck in an online game?
    – Paul
    Sep 26, 2013 at 13:45
  • You likely wouldn't see any sort of performance difference any differences would be so small ( i.e. like 1fps ) kind of differences.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 26, 2013 at 13:52
  • @Paul, well, my ping and latency are alright. I am just having low fps, but not high network latency. It is just that during intense fights, i get low frame rate, but I can still react quickly.
    – FrozenLand
    Sep 26, 2013 at 14:21
  • Powertweaking (including purchasing expensive RAM) memory will give you a 5-10 % performance boost. So no more than 4-15 fps.
    – Ярослав Рахматуллин
    Sep 26, 2013 at 14:28
  • the only game I'd recommend improving memory performance for is dwarf fortress, since that is widely acknowledged as the games primary bottleneck. it has ASCII graphics, so the standard concerns (GPU) aren't a concern.
    – Frank Thomas
    Sep 26, 2013 at 15:41

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Shorter memory clock cycles and shorter memory delays in that order of magnitude usually don't have that much of an effect on overall system or video game performance. It usually only affects some workloads like video encoding, file compression, or scientific computing.

An exception are integrated GPUs without dedicated video memory, but that's not your case.

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  • So going from CL11 to C8 wont make a huge difference? I mean, wouldnt that mean that the time for memory to retrieve some data will be reduced by about 1/4?
    – FrozenLand
    Sep 26, 2013 at 13:50
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    @FrozenLand - Before you actually replace the memory try overclocking your current memory
    – Ramhound
    Sep 26, 2013 at 13:54
  • @FrozenLand: Yes, grossly simplified that is true. Unfortunately a memory performance gain will in general translate to a much smaller overall performance gain. If you see 2 more frames/s out of this, you're lucky.
    – David Foerster
    Sep 26, 2013 at 14:02
  • Thanks folks. Some one said to me that CL11 is slow, so I thought I should upgrade this. But if there won't be significant, if any noticeable, performance gain, then I probably won't do it. I may just buy a pair to try and if they dont improve the performance, I will just return them. I think amazon and newegg have generous return policies.
    – FrozenLand
    Sep 26, 2013 at 14:18

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