Fastest Memory for Applications

[duda]

I have the ASUS ROG Crosshair V Formula-Z AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 and AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0GHz. I'm considering upgrading the CPU to something faster.

I mostly run applications and really want to tweak up the speed wherever I can (I am impatient). My idea is to get 2400Mhz memory and either OC the motherboard to handle the 2400 or use the 2400 with tighter timings.

I have not really done much overclocking before. What do you recommend I do? Which will be faster for running applications? Which G.Skill memory should I buy for this combo? What processor should I get to match up to the memory? I was pretty much thinking I'd get the AMD FX-9590 Vishera 8-Core 4.7 GHz Socket AM3+.

Money is not a factor. If there's any gain, I want it.

Also, I currently run 32 GB of ram. I have read that using more slots is slower than 2 slots. There's also the load on the MB/CPU to consider I suppose. Would I be better off tweaking for speed with only 2 slots of ram / 16 GB or will I get the same performance with 4 slots / 32 GB?

Any advice is appreciated. And I'll also need to find the posts regarding overclocking the MB for the memory.

[emissary42]

If your application runs out of memory with 16GB installed, then obviously 32GB of any memory are faster than swapping to HDD/SSD.

As far as DDR3-2400 goes, the memory divider for the ratio is available on AM3+ in general without overclocking the reference clock. It is still considered overclocking territory in terms of official specs for the memory controller, so actually running memory at that speed is not guaranteed. With all four slots occupied you might as well ask for a small miracle, but with just two modules it not too far fetched, as the CVF-Z in particular is a decent memclocker.

Also a DDR3-2400 CL10 kit like the F3-2400C10D-16GTX should be able to do DDR3-2133 9-11-11-28 below 1.65V if your quest for DDR3-2400 fails and sometimes you can get them cheaper than an original DDR3-2133 CL9 kit. So if you don't mind a bit of manually tweaking timings and voltages, it might be worth a try.