cpachris_1969 wrote:
Your tests clearly show that increasing the frequency of your RAM....or decreasing the timings for your RAM....will have a positive impact on your AE performance. Small....yes. But a positive impact none the less. So....since most RAM will easily overclock beyond the factory XMP.....why not do it? If someone is buying memory that is rated for faster specs that is much more costly....then maybe it doesn't make sense to do. But you might as well push your curent memory configuration as far as it can go.
I'm glad this was helpful for you. And I agree entirely that you should run your RAM as fast as possible (while remaining stable and not using ridiculously high voltages of coure 
) because even though the benefits in AE itself may not be terribly great you WILL notice the difference in your day to day tasks on your system.
My real goal for this test was to find out if it was worth shelling out an extra $300+ to get the super fast 3000MHz RAM vs the relatively inexpensive 1600MHz and 1866MHz RAM available. Since I primarily use my system for AE and PrePro work I know that I can save the $300 and not sacrifice any significant speed boosts.
cpachris_1969 wrote:
I'm still tweaking final settings in my build....but I have an X79 board that has 8 memory slots. The memory I have is 8x 8GB sticks rated at 1866 9,9,9,27. What I have found, is that I can run 4 of them (32gb) at 2133 10,11,10,30......or I can run 8 of them at 1600 7,7,7, 24. So, I have to choose bewteen 32gb at fast frequencies and slower timings.....or 64gb at slower frequencies but better timings. At least for now. I'm still tweaking.
My take away from your testing is that I may get more benefit out of the 64gb setup. Again....good stuff.
Well, at first glance I would say you would benefit significantly more from the 64GB setup. However, that all depends on how many cores your have and if you've ever done a project that used more than 32GB. If you very rarely exeed 32GB I would go with the 2133 at 10,11,10,30, but if you've noticed that you do use more than 32GB then I'd go for the 64GB of 1600 7,7,7,24. You will see a substantial increase in speed if your RAM doesn't have to constantly be trading data with any of your hard disks. Even if your RAM is running at a very low speed (even 1333MHz) it will still be drastically faster than even a Raid 0 Sata III SSD with 1GB/s transfer speeds. (1333MHZ is capable of 8.5GB/s).
The cores come in when you turn on rendering of multiple frames simultaneously. If you have 8 cores and you reserve 2 for all other programs and want to give 3GB of RAM to each of the 6 cores used for AE then you'll end up needing 6cores*3GB = 18GB just for the cores, plus whatever you leave for your other programs (I've found that 5GBs reserved for other programs gets me the best results, but that will vary system to system and project to project). So in that case you would need a total of 23GB (you'll actually need a GB or two more based on how AE uses the memory, but you get the point). In this case you could get away with 32GB
Now, lets say you have a 12 core system and want to use 10 simultaneously wth 3GB each. That alone takes you to 30GB before you leave anything for other programs and your OS. In this case you would definitely want to opt for the 64GB.
Oh, and as for the whole timings thing. To figure out your total latency you simply add up all your timings then divide them by your operating frequency. This will give you your total latency in nano secons (ns). So in your two cases you'll have:
10+11+10+30 = 61
61/2133MHz = 28.16ns for your 2133MHz setup.
7+7+7+24 = 45
45/1600MHz = 20.78ns for your 1600MHz setup.
Basically what this means is that for each block of data you access you will save 8ns with your 1600MHz setup. HOWEVER, 2133MHz can transfer the data into and out of that block much faster than your 1600MHz setup so even though you lose 8ns accessing the block you will likely make more than that back in the 2133MHz transfer speed into and out of the block after you've accessed it.
I hope that was helpful and let me know if something didn't quite make sense!