RAM question

[anxious_ant]

I currently have AMD 3900xt CPU paired with x2 16GB Corsair LPX DDR4 3200 CL16 RAM.
3DMark Timespy CPU scores are not too good, best I've got is around 11,100. Looking at similiar CPU benchmarks they are all scoring 13k+

Did some research and looks like Ryzen CPUs responds to faster RAM so got myself x2 8GB G.Skill TridentZ Neo DDR4 3600. Didn't really want the RGB but this is the best option I can find for the budget. Unfortunately the ram hearspreaders fouls my top mount radiator fans by a few millimetres, so have to return it.

Looking around I can't seem to find any high speed RAMs that are low profile. I am wondering if anyone there running 3600xt could recommend a decent low profile RAM please?

[HRL]

Have a look at the Team Group RAM on OCUK.

The problem is, the faster the RAM, the warmer it gets, hence the need for more passive cooling.

[anxious_ant]

HRL said:

Have a look at the Team Group RAM on OCUK.

Thanks, I will have a look.

HRL said:

The problem is, the faster the RAM, the warmer it gets, hence the need for more passive cooling.

Ah, no wonder most ram I've came across have tall heatspreaders.
I was so tempted to trim a little bit of the heat spreader on the G.Skill but stopped as that is not a good idea and may damage the RAM.

[xeny]

You're after increasing a benchmark score from about 11,000 to 13,000 or nearly 20%.

Increasing RAM speed by about 10% (3,200 to 3,600) is not going to result in a greater than proportional increase in a benchmark. You've got something else restricting performance.

Have you looked closely at what clock speed the CPU is sitting at while it is flat out?

[Mr_Yogi]

Have you tightened the timings on your RAM? By default the Ryzen RAM timing are very loose and just tightening the timings on the RAM can give a serious boost, as much as faster RAM in some applications.

There are applications which can detect all the RAM specs for the secondary and tertiary timings which you can then plug into the BIOS.

What applications do you want the speed boost for short of willy waving in benchmarks? If you look at Memory scaling revews for Ryzen you will see the benefits from different speeds and timings are all over the place. Some apps are faster with high speed RAM, other with lower letency RAM and with others it doesn't make a difference.

Buying new RAM sticks when you already have 3200 seems a complete waste of money to be honest. Unless you have a critical app which is takes advantage of faster RAM, which will pay for itself with the productivity, there is no way you will even notice the difference between 3200 and 3600.

[Steven_RW]

I wonder whether the RAM has been properly setup in the BIOS as 3200mhz is fast enough. You need to apply the equivalent of the XMP profile, which i think is called AMP for AMD.

I also wonder if you are competing with overclocked CPUs.

I'd do a bunch of checks first. Find out what mhz was the cpu holding throughout the entire test (get a graph from 3dmark or hwinfo). Did the cpu get hot and throttle?

Corsaird vengeance do 3600mhz ram desinged for ryzen cpus and they don't have big pointless show off heat spreaders.

RW

[anxious_ant]

Thanks all for the feedback. This is my gaming rig so it's used primarily for gaming, with some programming and 3D rendering (Unity) in my spare time.

Having recently spent quite a lot on building this rig I am keen to get the most out of it.
I have been using Time Spy in 3DMark as a benchmark, as it's easy to compare results with others with similiar hardware.

CPU clock frequency during Time Spy was 4,666 MHz, however I am not sure how to check for throttling.

I've activated the XMP profile in Aorus X570 bios and it's running 16-18-18-38 3200mhz @ 1.35V.

[HRL]

anxious_ant said:

Thanks all for the feedback. This is my gaming rig so it's used primarily for gaming, with some programming and 3D rendering (Unity) in my spare time.

Having recently spent quite a lot on building this rig I am keen to get the most out of it.
I have been using Time Spy in 3DMark as a benchmark, as it's easy to compare results with others with similiar hardware.

CPU clock frequency during Time Spy was 4,666 MHz, however I am not sure how to check for throttling.

I've activated the XMP profile in Aorus X570 bios and it's running 16-18-18-38 3200mhz @ 1.35V.

Ryzen CPU’s can see a huge performance increase using tighter RAM timings, and higher clock speeds too, to an extent.

Something like this: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-memor...

It’s the DRAM Calculator that you need.

I’ve got 32Gb of 3600/CL14 waiting for my 5950X to finally turn up.

Edited by HRL on Monday 5th April 02:49

[snuffy]

I too have a 3900XT @ 4MHz, and I've just run the same benchmark:

11514 is my result.

My RAM is 64GB DDR4-3600.

Where do you select comparing it to other people's benchmarks with the same CPU ? I can't find that option.

[rxe]

What problem are you trying to solve?

It is no surprise that bench marks optimise results for faster memory, that is what they are trying to test (and sell).

Back in the real world, what is too slow?

[Mr_Yogi]

If this is for gaming, and you are not running a top end video card at 1080p with medium settings trying to get 300+ FPS in competitive games, you will not see any difference moving to faster ram in games. You might get 1 or 2 FPS boost on a benchmark but nothing a user could detect. As I stated before and as someone else mentioned above, look at all the secondary and tertiary timings and set them appropriately.

In nearly all current gaming situations where you are running games on high or ultra with that CPU (even with your current ram) you will be GPU limited, even with an RTX3090.

[anxious_ant]

snuffy said:

I too have a 3900XT @ 4MHz, and I've just run the same benchmark:

11514 is my result.

My RAM is 64GB DDR4-3600.

Where do you select comparing it to other people's benchmarks with the same CPU ? I can't find that option.

You need to log into 3DMark in the browser. Click on Results on the top menu (not My Results). Then enter your CPU and GPU and click search.
You will see a list and your best score highlighted. It only shows top 100 and you can click into individual scores to view their setup.

[anxious_ant]

HRL said:

Ryzen CPU’s can see a huge performance increase using tighter RAM timings, and higher clock speeds too, to an extent.

Something like this: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-memor...

It’s the DRAM Calculator that you need.

I’ve got 32Gb of 3600/CL14 waiting for my 5950X to finally turn up.

Edited by HRL on Monday 5th April 02:49

Cheers for this, I will have a read and also try to manually adjust my timings in the BIOS.

[anxious_ant]

Mr_Yogi said:

If this is for gaming, and you are not running a top end video card at 1080p with medium settings trying to get 300+ FPS in competitive games, you will not see any difference moving to faster ram in games. You might get 1 or 2 FPS boost on a benchmark but nothing a user could detect. As I stated before and as someone else mentioned above, look at all the secondary and tertiary timings and set them appropriately.

In nearly all current gaming situations where you are running games on high or ultra with that CPU (even with your current ram) you will be GPU limited, even with an RTX3090.

Understood. I thought that CPU does boost performance in some games.
My GPU is RTX 3090.
I will have a read at the link above and have a go at manually adjusting the timings.

[anxious_ant]

rxe said:

What problem are you trying to solve?

It is no surprise that bench marks optimise results for faster memory, that is what they are trying to test (and sell).

Back in the real world, what is too slow?

Not really trying to solve anything, being an enthusiast just trying to ensure that my setup is running at a optimum level
3DMark is the only benchmark I have to measure this. However as someone pointed out perhaps those scores are on heavily overclocked machines.
I would've thought my CPU is capable of sustaining close to 50fps in 3DMark TImeSpy CPU test, however at the moment its closer to 38fps.

[Steven_RW]

anxious_ant said:

CPU clock frequency during Time Spy was 4,666 MHz, however I am not sure how to check for throttling.

To check for throttling, you look at the CPU MHZ at the exact start of the test and then the middle and then the end.

If it revs up to 5ghz and then 30 seconds in hits a high temperature, then it will likely pull down the frequency of the CPU and you would see a decline.

You can use HWinfo64 and find your core cpu frequency and then set that graph and log. Then run the 3dmark. Or you can look at the bottom of the results section of 3d mark and usually there is graph and you can follow the CPU frequency over time to see if it throttles.

I'd share a screenshot of the frequency and the cpu temp on here and then you can get more input.

It is likely that you are competing with overclocked CPUs and that is where most of the difference is. You won't necessarily be able to tell but the fact another forum user showed their score in line with yours suggests you don't really have an issue.

Overclocking ability is based on the cooling facility you have on your cpu (big air cooler? Good aio? standard AMD cooler? custom loop?) and the quality of your cpu and motherboard.

I'd be looking to make sure my PC was doing what is expected of it at standard/stock cpu frequency and if it is, then i'd go read up on how to overclock.

As said by another forum poster, having an overclocked cpu is fun but it only really matters when you are pushing for very high frame rates and they are associated with running lower resolution monitor on a more basic gfx setting on a game. If you are 1440p or 4k, then your frame rate is 99% limited by your gpu and doesn't spend much time waiting on your cpu even if it isn't overclocked out of its mind. :-)

RW

[HRL]

anxious_ant said:

Mr_Yogi said:

If this is for gaming, and you are not running a top end video card at 1080p with medium settings trying to get 300+ FPS in competitive games, you will not see any difference moving to faster ram in games. You might get 1 or 2 FPS boost on a benchmark but nothing a user could detect. As I stated before and as someone else mentioned above, look at all the secondary and tertiary timings and set them appropriately.

In nearly all current gaming situations where you are running games on high or ultra with that CPU (even with your current ram) you will be GPU limited, even with an RTX3090.

Understood. I thought that CPU does boost performance in some games.
My GPU is RTX 3090.
I will have a read at the link above and have a go at manually adjusting the timings.

I’ve got a 3090FE and although much of what has been said is true, tighter RAM timings provided substantially better minimum frame rates with a 2700X, and probably with my incoming 5950X too.

I get it, you spend all that money and you want to get the most out of your kit. Nothing wrong with spending a few hours fine tuning it for a little more performance.

[snuffy]

anxious_ant said:

snuffy said:

I too have a 3900XT @ 4MHz, and I've just run the same benchmark:

11514 is my result.

My RAM is 64GB DDR4-3600.

Where do you select comparing it to other people's benchmarks with the same CPU ? I can't find that option.

You need to log into 3DMark in the browser. Click on Results on the top menu (not My Results). Then enter your CPU and GPU and click search.
You will see a list and your best score highlighted. It only shows top 100 and you can click into individual scores to view their setup.

Ah yes, I see it now, thanks.

You can actually show more than the top 100 if you move the orange slider which is just below the top graph.

For my results:

CPU : 11514
GPU : 7639
Overall : 8045

If I enter just my CPU, I'm ranked in the bottom 11%.

If I enter just my GPU, I'm ranked in the top 11%

But if I enter my CPU (3900XT) and GPU (RTX 2060), I'm ranked 88. Which looks great, but it seems there are only 192 machines that match my GPU and CPU spec.

[anxious_ant]

snuffy said:

Ah yes, I see it now, thanks.

You can actually show more than the top 100 if you move the orange slider which is just below the top graph.

For my results:

CPU : 11514
GPU : 7639
Overall : 8045

If I enter just my CPU, I'm ranked in the bottom 11%.

If I enter just my GPU, I'm ranked in the top 11%

But if I enter my CPU (3900XT) and GPU (RTX 2060), I'm ranked 88. Which looks great, but it seems there are only 192 machines that match my GPU and CPU spec.

Ah, I didn't know about the orange slider

My best score is 17993 (bottom 47%). CPU : 11187 GPU : 20158

CPU only top 11% suprisingly, GPU only bottom 49%.

One thing about my GPU (MSI Gaming X Trio 3090) is that it is not stable at higher core and memory overclocks. Taking Cyberpunk 2077 as a game benchmark I am currently averaging about 65-70fps @ 1440p on mostly ultra settings. Silicone lottery I suppose. Would've liked to get my hand on the STRIX but it's neigh on impossible without paying astronomical price.

Not really aiming to be the top scorer in 3DMark, just using it as a benchmark to see if my setup is performing optimally.

[mikef]

Looking at this 4400MHz RAM: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/patriot-viper-steel..., seems to be low profile