do people still tweak and overclock memory?

mnewxcv

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I just got some new RAM and it occurred to me that I bought it based on its rated performance. I remember back in the day (they way back days, ddr1 days) we would spend countless time reducing timings, memtesting, reducing, memtesting, until we found our best stable settings. Is this still the norm here, or are people mostly setting xmp and leaving it alone? For reference, I bought a g.skill kit which is cjr/djr ddr4, xmp is 16-19-19-39 @ 3600MHz. I spent yesterday tweaking it and memtesting and was able to get 16-16-19-34 @ 3766MHz, 4 pass memtest stable. Not sure if I will ever notice the difference, but it did reduce latency and increase bandwidth about 5% in aida. I could have gone higher on memory, but that is where my 3800x is happy doing 1 to 1 on fclk. So are you guys still doing this or not worth the time over enabling XMP?
 
I think at this point we don't see the point.

Overclocking memory used to bring amazing differences, but 5% for the extra stress on components? Nah.

Take a CPU.. I can run X cpu at 800mhz over its rated with very little change in core voltage, or at least still in the happy range. If I wanted an extra 200mhz I might need to drastically increasing voltage.

I don't see the returns on that drastic voltage jump, so to me, it's pointless and just going to shorten the chips life for negligible improvement.
 
The guy above 100% wrong. It is definitely worth it to tighten the timings with ryzen. Hell, theY make a calculator for it. You only see a few percent differences in synthetic benchmarks, but in gaming it can be 20%+ in 1% lows.
 
Tweaking the subs alone can bring you around 10% take a look at what Ryzen DRAM calc suggests for your kit for a starting point.

If you chose the right RAM you can get some good speeds like 3200c14 kits using Samsung b die can reach around 3600-3733c14 or 4000c16 with very tight subs.
This increased my performance in most games more than overclocking a 6700K from 4.2GHz to 4.7GHz and combined with the CPU OC it made for a very noticeable performance increase while both the CPU and RAM OC on there own was less noticeable.
 
I'd say back in the days when cheap chipsets let you, people used to do it more. But chipsets that let you do it are becoming more and more damn expensive.
I have a B360 board (cheap) and it lets me set the timings but only lets me run RAM at 2666MHz. I am able to run CAS14 but that is about all. Running it at 3600MHz would probably bring me gains. CAS14 vs CAS16 probably does not make a difference.
 
Absolutely. Memory tweaking is one of the few things in building thats still fun. I find i have more mbs than i need and far more sets of memory than i need. All because i have to scratch that itch and see how this ocs on that. Yeah, memory ocing is still a thing.
 
I'd say back in the days when cheap chipsets let you, people used to do it more. But chipsets that let you do it are becoming more and more damn expensive.
I have a B360 board (cheap) and it lets me set the timings but only lets me run RAM at 2666MHz. I am able to run CAS14 but that is about all. Running it at 3600MHz would probably bring me gains. CAS14 vs CAS16 probably does not make a difference.
Every single AM4 board allows this. They don't lock you out like Intel. Since OP states his 3800x... I'll assume he means zen2 and has these features.

OP:. Download Ryzen dram calc and thaiphoon burner. Thaiphoon burner will read info about your ram which you can export to the dram calc to get some basic settings. There are a lot of sub-timimgs (besides the big ones like cas) that can make a decent difference in performance as well.
 
hell yea people do.. and its been even more popular the last couple years because of the relationship with memory and infinity fabric on ryzen. theres some awesome deals on the cheap 3000mhz micron IC based kits that have a massive amount of headroom. if you want to see some recent good memory related videos Buildzoid on youtube has alot of good memory OC related content.
 
Entirely yes. Now (on AMD at least) it really matters more than it ever has for a "normal" person's usage.
 
Absolutely...even on an Intel Z370 board. It's not like it takes a lot of effort and the gains are more tangible than non-extreme CPU overclocking.
 
I just got some new RAM and it occurred to me that I bought it based on its rated performance. I remember back in the day (they way back days, ddr1 days) we would spend countless time reducing timings, memtesting, reducing, memtesting, until we found our best stable settings. Is this still the norm here, or are people mostly setting xmp and leaving it alone? For reference, I bought a g.skill kit which is cjr/djr ddr4, xmp is 16-19-19-39 @ 3600MHz. I spent yesterday tweaking it and memtesting and was able to get 16-16-19-34 @ 3766MHz, 4 pass memtest stable. Not sure if I will ever notice the difference, but it did reduce latency and increase bandwidth about 5% in aida. I could have gone higher on memory, but that is where my 3800x is happy doing 1 to 1 on fclk. So are you guys still doing this or not worth the time over enabling XMP?
Huge gains on amd in some cases with higher ram speeds & higher fclk. Going from ddr4-3200/f-clock 1600 -> ddr4-3600 fclk-1800 gave me about +10-12fps on Far Cry 5 at 1440p/ultra (no-aa) on my 1080Ti. Been 100% stable @ stock for a few months. Thinking of trying the fclock at 3733 to see if I have any more gains.
 
Huge gains on amd in some cases with higher ram speeds & higher fclk. Going from ddr4-3200/f-clock 1600 -> ddr4-3600 fclk-1800 gave me about +10-12fps on Far Cry 5 at 1440p/ultra (no-aa) on my 1080Ti. Been 100% stable @ stock for a few months. Thinking of trying the fclock at 3733 to see if I have any more gains.
The only game I'm playing right now is forza motorsports 7 and I didn't notice any huge gains in fps but a little is better than nothing. Hoping it helps with flight simulator which seems to take advantage of all the hardware you can throw at it. I'm doing 3733, but for me I had to bump up the fclk voltages a little bit. Whatever dram calculator said the max voltage suggested was is what I used. It wasn't stable at all with the infinity fabric voltage on auto at 3733, but 3600 was fine with auto. Ymmv.
 
The only game I'm playing right now is forza motorsports 7 and I didn't notice any huge gains in fps but a little is better than nothing. Hoping it helps with flight simulator which seems to take advantage of all the hardware you can throw at it. I'm doing 3733, but for me I had to bump up the fclk voltages a little bit. Whatever dram calculator said the max voltage suggested was is what I used. It wasn't stable at all with the infinity fabric voltage on auto at 3733, but 3600 was fine with auto. Ymmv.
I'm going to poke around at that. FC5 is known for being CPU limited. In some scenarios with my Ryzen 5 3600 + PBO (+200) and my 3600-c16 with FCLCK @ 1800, my gpu usage dips to 65% or so at 1440p ultra...I'm going to guess New Dawn which I'm playing next is going to be the same.
 
Memory tuning is one of the few avenues of performance tuning we have left. Modern CPU's are frankly, pretty boring for the most part. While you can spend a lot of time tuning Ryzen based systems, you generally don't get much for your considerable efforts. The last CPU I reviewed that was actually fun to overclock was the almost mythical Intel Core i9-10980XE. Its the last traditional overclocking experience left if you can find one. The mainstream 10th generation processors are basically like AMD's Ryzens. They have a similar boost clock situation and don't do so well on an all core manual overclock. They are being binned at the edge of what the silicon is generally capable of.

Memory tuning on the Intel side doesn't actually do that much for you in most cases. However, on the AMD side, decent performance gains can be had. Ryzen responds well to tightened timings and clock speed increases up to about 3800MHz. It can achieve higher speeds of course, but given the Infinity Fabric clock and memory clock dividers you have to employ to do it, you are at a point of diminishing returns. That is to say that your system should be faster at DDR4 3733MHz or 3800MHz than it would be at DDR4 4000MHz.
 
The guy above 100% wrong. It is definitely worth it to tighten the timings with ryzen. Hell, theY make a calculator for it. You only see a few percent differences in synthetic benchmarks, but in gaming it can be 20%+ in 1% lows.

Agreed. People way underestimate memory overclocking.

I get a pretty good performance increase OCing my memory with my 9900k which is also OCd. It's definitely significant. And even if you could only get a 5% increase, it's Soft AF not to pursue that.
 
Funny I tried mem OC twice and it corrupted my windows, but if I under-clock my GPU the FPS goes up 10% due to better timings so go figure.
 
I tried a XMP profile and it bombed my windows. The CPU clocks up to 4.6 fine.
My GPU runs considerably cooler at lower clocks and the timings tighten up. When I run the Metro benchmark I gain 10% on my 390 X at 1200 MHz.
When I go to 1750 I hit 422 Gb/sec(BW) but it hits 90 degrees with an AIO, too hot so it throttles clocks down.
 
The right ram and the right mobo can work out well.
I bought some Corsair LPX 3000 C15 (D Die) and my first 2x Z170 mid/low range mobos wouldnt let it be stable higher than 2500MHz.
Then I got an Asus Maximus mobo and it clocked to 3733MHZ C17 at 1.44V, I still use it like this.

I took 2 sticks of this same ram and stuck it in my new AMD 3600 machine about a month ago.
This ram is on the mobos QVL but only for two dimms so thats what I tried.
But it maxed out at 2800MHz no matter how much voltage otherwise it needed a cmos reset.
Sorry show.
 
The right ram and the right mobo can work out well.
I bought some Corsair LPX 3000 C15 (D Die) and my first 2x Z170 mid/low range mobos wouldnt let it be stable higher than 2500MHz.
Then I got an Asus Maximus mobo and it clocked to 3733MHZ C17 at 1.44V, I still use it like this.

I took 2 sticks of this same ram and stuck it in my new AMD 3600 machine about a month ago.
This ram is on the mobos QVL but only for two dimms so thats what I tried.
But it maxed out at 2800MHz no matter how much voltage otherwise it needed a cmos reset.
Sorry show.
Weird, guess it's different revision. I have LPX 3000cl16 and it came with Samsung b-die. I haven't pushed it yet (waiting on my motherboard RMA to install my new 3700x), but I have as able to meet docp (xmp) and it ran no issues at 3000 on an old 1600 with a crappy memory controller. I suspect my 3700x won't have issues either. Corsair seems very hit and miss for AMD (and just on what chips you get). Did you just touch memory voltage or did you up your soc voltage slightly as well? Were you able to get timings tightened up, that can give you a nice boost if you can't get clocks up.
 
The right ram and the right mobo can work out well.
I bought some Corsair LPX 3000 C15 (D Die) and my first 2x Z170 mid/low range mobos wouldnt let it be stable higher than 2500MHz.
Then I got an Asus Maximus mobo and it clocked to 3733MHZ C17 at 1.44V, I still use it like this.

I took 2 sticks of this same ram and stuck it in my new AMD 3600 machine about a month ago.
This ram is on the mobos QVL but only for two dimms so thats what I tried.
But it maxed out at 2800MHz no matter how much voltage otherwise it needed a cmos reset.
Sorry show.
different gen boards optimize more for different IC revisions. not too surprising since what was a popular IC back in the x99 z170 days isnt really the same as whats most common now. likely not much time went into the training algorithms. if you try and stick the best rev e, DJR, or bdie kits available now in those old boards id bet you get similiar results (*maybe* not with bdie). its not the ICs, its the boards and bios'..and well in the case of x99 the IMC was pretty trash too.
 
Just getting into the nuances of memory overclocking after being an "auto" settings guy for a long time (since my P4 [email protected] Vapochill days) .. started with Ryzen Master telling my Coupled Mode was off ..

Google .. what the heck is "Coupled Mode"?

Now I have my 2 x 16GB 3200mhz Hynix chipped HyperX Predators runnng at 3800mhz 1.41v with fclk @ 1900 (1:1) no voltage increase on my 3700x. I've only messed with 5 of the memory timings with everything else set to "auto" .. there is sooo much more to learn and I'm kinda digg'n it :)
 
I think (on Intel like I use) it's reached a point of little return but I still fiddle with it. I set 1T and reduce the tRCD and tRP by 1. Thats about it. I wouldn't fret about it if I couldn't adjust them.
 
Definitely worth it with Ryzen. It has gotten even more advanced going down into the subtimings to squeeze out performance
 
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