Are the 1866 and 2133MHz RAM modules makes any sense for 4th Gen Intel laptops?

I read Haswell CPUs support memory modules up to 1600MHz 1.35V. Is that correct? Would I benefit anything from a faster RAM, for example a 2133MHz 1.35V CL11 Hyperx Impact?

 

Well going from 1600 to 1866 your system may feel a tiny bit more responsive (snappier), but beyond 1866 you won't feel any difference.

That being said, if the cost difference between 1600 and 2133 is $20, then definitely grab the 2133.

 

So will it run 1866MHz or 2133MHz as Plug and Play or downclocked to 1600MHz? I buy probably the 2133MHz, because only $5 more expensive than the 1866MHz.

 

...pretty much any and all laptop manufacturers lock the bus:dram ratio, and hardset the ram-timing to some curious "intel recommended" settings from 2002. So the entire discussion really isn't very interesting in the laptop world.

But - yes, of course! If you can boost the bus-transfer and decrease the time it takes to shift the heavy loads from ram across the bus, that's a huge benefit with very little cost in terms of heat and so on.

In fact, better ram-timing and dynamically clocked front-bus:dram ratio is a function that could both increase the battery life as well as improve battery life on average on practically every single laptop sold in the past 5-6 years.

However... not interesting to us as customers. Since, to quote a certain representative from a company: "the settings are locked [to max speeds and too low tresholds] to prevent overclocking".

It does not help to actually contact people in these companies who might want to save themselves support issues with badly clocked ram, or to have their customers become happier with their purchase either. Such people seem to not actually exist in the laptop world for some reason.

 

What are you talking about? I can overclock my 2133 Corsair Vengeance to 2400 and it runs fine.

 

You have probably special laptop, which allows you overclocking. As far as I know in most of the Intel laptops 2133MHz modules will run only at 1600MHz speed, so does not make sense buy faster RAM.

 

Most likely no difference in noticeable performance. My desktop needed an extremely fast 2200mhz kit at 9-11-10 1T coupled with an i7-3570K at 4.5Ghz to notice a slightly snappier overall response.
However, if the cost differential is minimal, might as well go for the 2133mhz kit for the peace of mind (and potentially e-peen).

The best kit I can recommend in this respect is the G.Skill Ripjaws 2133mhz 11-11-11-2T 1.35V kit. I got a 16Gb kit myself and I can confirm they use JEDEC specs for the 2133mhz instead of XMP. This means that if your CPU supports 2133mhz at all, it will plug in and work immediately. No need for BIOS mods.

 

Unless if you're using an AMD APU (bandwidth starved even at 2133 mhz), it's not really worth getting the faster RAM.

 

It is worth or not, I just like to know if 2133MHz Dual-Channel RAM will run 2133MHz in HP ENVY 17t-j100 with Core i5-4200M Processor or just at 1600MHz speed?

 

For Intel CPUs, 1333mhz or 1600mhz RAM is sufficient. I doubt the laptop's mobo would support 2133mhz, and would probably default to a lower clock speed.

 

Your CPU's memory controller may not be able to handle 2133MHz.

Aside from that, pretty sure your HP Envy's BIOS is locked down tighter than Fort Knox so the BIOS may not even support ram speeds beyond 1600.

 

..usually it can. Most of the chipsets older than two-three years or so actually have the functionality. They also have dynamic clocking options, along with ways to set different timing thresholds as bus-speeds go down, that sort of thing. Been available for a very long time, and it's part of the function set (desktop versions have had the functionality for yonks). That are put in there specifically to counter the issues laptop-manufacturers get into when trying to put a "high performance" module into a laptop with power-saving functions enabled.

..and then laptop manufacturers happened. And people competing with each other on raising the dram speeds from 1333Mhz to 1600Mhz, with an unknown bus-speed.

Ever watched kids try to put a boosting kit on a scooter with an rpm limitation? That's basically what this is.

Right. But it's the same for clevos, yes? Unless you have a bios set up by a competent reseller. They have the tools available if they ask for them. And would be able to ship bioses with these settings open. Or set, but locked. But they usually don't, because it causes more issues to not have uniform failsafe settings across the board.

You also actually get people setting up the ram modules with one less contact for the dram functions. That's some serious super-saving going on right there. I'm sure they save approximately 0.001$ in copper that way.

 

He has an i5, and a rather low end one at that. The lowest quad core (4700MQ) that I had could just barely run 2133MHz. I'm not exactly hopeful that a low end i5 will be able to run 2133MHz. Intel doesn't bin for the memory controller specifically aside from making sure it will run the officially rated 1600MHz. A higher end chip has a higher chance of getting a better memory controller, and the opposite is also true.

It's the same for all laptops. There isn't a single laptop manufacturer that offers a fully unlocked BIOS from the factory. The difference is some laptops (like Clevo and Alienware) allow you to tweak the settings through XTU even if the BIOS is locked. Can't say the same for others.

 

That's how you get around the locked bios settings?

So can you even adjust the fsb:bclk here? Or are you basically only allowed to adjust the multipler, or the fsb number? There's no way to get around the memory timing in intel's "extreme tweaking utility", I know that for certain. So what are the actual settings you can adjust?

I mean, the problem is that as you increase the bus speed, the memory controller is also adjusted based on the "bclk:dram" ratio. Meaning that you might be able to raise the "speed" to above the normal level by just raising the bus-speed. But depending on how the rest of the settings are entered in, you are now just raising all variables and exaggerating the overclock. When the ram also doesn't actually obey the timing you're setting for them, but the bios locked timing, there's not all that high probability that they won't run into problems.

....so this is what the Asus morons were talking about when they said they wanted to avoid people overclocking, huh.. Good gods.

See, the xtu utility is really just meant for downclocking to idle states, or scaling up towards "performance" modes, and so on. The interface that tweak utility uses is usually more or less made available through the power profile applications, just with fewer unlocked settings.

But what you could do of course is to set a higher bus-speed (than 800Mhz), set up an fsb:dram ratio nearer 1:2 than 1:4. And then set the latency settings down while that fsb is maintained. That's going to work great.

Or, you could increase the timing so that they run safely at a higher memory speed (good quality ram will do that - it has nothing to do with the pcb quality on the motherboard), and then scale up towards that during the high performance settings. But then also have stable settings when the bus drops down to the lower rates and lower volt settings.

Meanwhile, scaling cpu states lower than 1Ghz is also possible on intel, I think, if you set this up in a reasonably clever way.

So that would be possible to do. And while xtu tweak has been introduced to some newer functions only in the last 4 years or so, those functions have been on all the mainboards shipped with laptops since 2002.

...I don't know, though. Do you think it's about time people learned to understand how these things actually work now?

 

XTU didn't work on my i3 Sandybridge laptop. Though from what I've heard, even the quadcore i7 SBs were fully locked down, which meant an OCed i7 920xm could outperform even the highest end i7 SBs (assuming the power delivery and the cooling system can handle it).

Intel reversed that policy with Ivy Bridge or Haswell.

 

Never used the stock BIOS since mine came with a partially unlocked BIOS. Can't say what happens with the stock BIOS but a fully unlocked BIOS will allow you to adjust just about everything, including memory timings. Proof:


The command rate isn't an option in XTU but can be adjusted in the BIOS.

There is no FSB, it's been obsolete since the Nehalem days. There's only a BCLK, and various multipliers. The stock (and even partially unlocked) BIOS don't allow BCLK overclocking, but Prema's fully unlocked BIOS allows BCLK to be changed as well. So now I can change both the BCLK (reference clock) in addition to the memory multipliers which I could do already out the gate.

 

I see. So the ratios are set, but can be tuned with multiplers of the base bus clock, while running, without need for reboot. The same with latency settings.. .. Thanks. Let me guess, you can actually lower the speed of the intel gpu ram to "not bloody overclocked" as well.

...in any case -- so basically everyone owning a laptop with a panther point or later could get a supremely tuned laptop with massively lower power-consumption, more stable running, and predictable heat output tomorrow.

But will not, because laptop manufacturers hire monkeys to do their bios tuning for them. Along with a bunch of people to write snarky responses to you about how "you just have to buy another laptop if you want to change the ram-modules" when you ask nicely that they might consider certain policies about locked hardware.

God damn it. Excuse me while I go and drown myself in a bucket of coffee.

 

Tech support:

"Hey uh, my laptop isn't booting anymore after adjusting the voltage."

OR:

"I increased voltage to make my computer run faster. Why does it keep overheating and shutting down?"

 

Memory multipliers and timing require a reboot, but CPU multipliers can be changed on the fly.

Also, all this requires BIOS support, so even if a laptop is running Lynx Point none of the stuff can be changed if the BIOS is locked, which I don't foresee this changing anytime soon with "mainstream grade" laptops. And for good reason(s) too I should add.

 

Not really. Unless you like playing the silly "My numbers are bigger than your's" game.

 

As it is quad core with turbo and hyper threading do not substantially become hindered by memory bandwidth. They do under synthetics and maybe some apps that use HUGE memory profiles/objects but that is about it. While I would like faster memory the few times it would save me a few seconds is not worth the money too me.

 

I will point out that 2133MHz memory or faster helps if you're a livestreamer with encoding. Not a huge amount, but it does help a bit, and that's a constant, real-world application that can be used, even if small. By that logic, it should help with all x264 encoding, so if that's the kinda stuff you do, enjoy =3.

 

... such as?

You can already fry most laptops if they rely on "hardware limits" for temperature on the cpu.

And I don't see how when for example Asus locks memory latency settings to slightly too high, that this won't cause bigger issues than setting them to the spd-defaults.

I'm asking for sensible settings that actually use the feature set that is already included. With the mainboards we and the manufacturer pay a premium to get with these functions inserted.

Overclocking on a laptop is after all completely idiotic. What we want here is sensible settings that allow low idle and efficient performance.

Rather than what we're getting now, which is something in the middle that increases system instability, decreases battery life, while also not giving us the performance we could get. Either due to simply bad settings, or lack of throttling/temperature policies that fit the tdp budget. That incidentally is how laptop manufacturers decide what components to put in. And which causes problems when the hardware doesn't spend power within the tdp budget that was advertised.

:/

 

I meant there are plenty of good reasons not to stick an unlocked BIOS in a mainstream laptop. As for memory timings, no they won't fry or even damage a laptop, but if you don't know what you're doing you could easily cause a no-POST situation that requires a CMOS reset. Not a problem for people who know what they are doing, but let's face it most of the people buying HPs or Dells or whatever don't have half a clue what they're doing, and giving them access to stuff like this is just dangerous.

Yeah totally sucks for the prosumers and power users, but usually companies design their products around the lowest denominator unfortunately.

As for overclocking, just be responsible with what you're doing and you won't damage anything or cause your laptop to experience a re-entry event.

 

Found a review with Ripjaws 2x4GB 2133MHz DDR3L SO-DIMM and what is interesting CPU part worked slower as with 1866MHz RAM. I'll later check this thing on my laptop as well, Corsair 2133MHz RAM modules are on the way .

 

Again - the problem is not that the settings are locked. The problem is that the locked settings are.. comically badly set up, and also don't use the features the manufacturers advertise.

The biggest problem with unhooked "recommended by intel" spd-timing for no apparent reason, to take a very common example, is how it increases wear on the laptop, makes it run less stable, and makes sure that changing your ram to a different type is usually impossible.

How does that benefit either manufacturer or consumer? It doesn't. Unless you are ignorant of the technical details, and create some theory or other based on something else.

When it comes to the inability to set most ddr3l equipped laptops down to lower processor states without the system becoming unstable -- that is again from very badly tweaked bios/uefi settings, and very unclever use of the tools that Intel provides. Not just manufacturers, but also resellers. They all just set the highest frequency states and don't adjust the ram, volt, latency and frequency with the cpu. And most of the time, you don't need to touch most of it from the defaults. That's how bad this is.

Essentially, what is being commonly done results in higher battery draw, higher heat, and again unstable running on battery. But it's passed over, because there is a relative improvement over running everything at full burn all the time.

So how does this benefit either consumer or manufacturer? From a warranty standpoint? From a production cost scenario in terms of buying features you don't use? From a consumer point of view in terms of getting value for the money? It doesn't. Ffs.