Sustaining high frame rates (250fps+) on Ryzen 3000

GregI

GregI

GregI

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This is going to be a long post to fully explain my thought process so I'm hoping someone has some extra info to help me get over the obstacle.

I know this is a pretty niche area of PC gaming where most people are fine getting over 100 fps but since I was spending close to £1000, I wanted a PC capable of sustaining over 240fps in Overwatch at 1080p (75% render scale). Yes, this will be at low settings. The reason being is I was going to upgrade to a 240Hz panel this year.

One such video I looked at was this benchmark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7LjGIi7H7Q

Their system is a Ryzen 5 3600, RTX 2060 and G.Skill Aegis F4-3000C16D-16GISB RAM. Apparently this is 3000Mhz CAS16.

I thought to myself that's good. They once drop down to 250fps but that was fine (please note killcams will drop to much lower but this does not matter during actual gameplay). Just to make sure I bought myself slightly better hardware than what they used to be safe. I kept the same CPU as it seemed highly regarded everywhere but I got an RTX 2060 Super and 16GB 3200Mhz CAS16 Corsair instead.

I boot up Overwatch and during character selection and at the start of the game (30 second wait) I was maxxing the game out at 300 fps. All seemed good until people started doing stuff like Zarya beam, Roadhog hooking someone... basically just normal teamfights. I had dips down to 210 (was running MSI Afterburner to record minimum FPS) with average FPS around 245fps. I know that's not exactly awful but when that guy had less powerful hardware than me and was averaging about 275fps by my estimations, something was wrong.

I have spent like 2 days researching windows settings and Nvidia settings and although they might improve stuff it's still not nowhere near what this video showed. I doubt some setting he has is magically netting him +25fps with worse hardware. Pretty sure I've tried everything I can but still open to any ideas here

The more I searched around, most notably reddit and popular streamers were advocating how RAM speed has a significant impact for Overwatch in regards to high frame rates. Streamer: "Someone who went from 2400Mhz ram / 155-210fps in team fights then went to 3600Mhz / 270-300fps in team fights just from the ram swap that costed them $165 (at the time, for 16gb)"

I thought this strange because my RAM has the same CAS as that video benchmark but 200Mhz extra boost. If anything that should mean I got better fps. I then dug deeper and it appears using CPU-Z my sticks are SK Hynix. The only thing I can come up with why this person with 3000Mhz RAM is beating me is because they have what is known as B-Die chips on his G.Skill. I know PC hardware can be finicky but is the change from SK Hynix to Samsung B-Die netting this guy an extra 20fps average FPS and less severe dips? I would have thought the extra 200Mhz would have offset any issue with RAM die or whatever. I still don't know if it is Samsung B-Die because of it's not it adds even more confusion for me.

The 3 issues I can see right now is this:

1: My CPU is not good enough
2: My GPU is not good enough
3: My RAM is not clocked high enough

As for 1, is a 3600 really not good enough to process this much frames constantly? Like I said the CPU can lose 50 fps here and I'm fine with that. It just can't be losing 70. If this really is the issue, I'm kind of stuck. I also refuse to believe an RTX 2060 Super running a 3.5 year old game at 75% render scale of 1080p with 0 details like AA turned on is having trouble spitting out over 250 fps constantly. It just occured to me to talk about temps incase you think throttling is an issue. CPU never goes over 55c and GPU has never went over 64c. Idle GPU temp is 38c and CPU idle is 40c or so

So let's hope it's RAM in this scenario which has some decent backup to say it is. I read more about something called Infinity Fabric and apparently a good sweet spot is 3600Mhz due to being close to a 1:1 value or something. The problem is I can't find any 3600Mhz low latency kits for any reasonable amount of money in the QVL list for my B450-F board. I can find Corsair 3600Mhz CAS 18 for not much more than my CAS 16 3200Mhz kit but most people say CAS 18 is bad but it might not matter since I'll be getting close to the 1:1 Infinity fabric or whatever that it may actually be faster overall

If you're still reading, thank you. I doubt many people can help me but if you know for sure upgrading my RAM will sort my issue I'd love to know
 
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you will always get frame drops, 1% lows and 0.1% lows, depending on how much is happening and what needs to be rendered, frame spikes if you like. Likely not the RAM, but limits of CPU and GPU, you will definitely be CPU limited, and may be GPU limited at times too. I don't play FPS, but from what I hear at 1080p, CPU will be the limit if you use a 2080ti, and possibly both if the system is balanced (yours is) and you use a card like a 2060 super. Even a 9900ks and a 2080ti will struggle to maintain what you want at 1080 though without frame drops / spikes when game play becomes intense. Gamers Nexus did a fab video a while ago explaining frame rates and 1% and 0.1% lows. generally unavoidable but depend to en extent on the game / game engine. if you are getting an average of 245 frames and 210 lows, then you will be into diminishing returns to improve on this. It is acceptable to most. Can you actually see it? frame drops to 210? I doubt it.
 
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GregI said:
I know this is a pretty niche area of PC gaming where most people are fine getting over 100 fps but since I was spending close to £1000, I wanted a PC capable of sustaining over 240fps in Overwatch at 1080p (75% render scale). Yes, this will be at low settings. The reason being is I was going to upgrade to a 240Hz panel this year.
Click to expand...

Do you have precision boost overdrive enabled?

Did you enable XMP in your BIOS so your RAM is running at its rated speed?

You mentioned OW settings at all low, does that include dynamic reflections being off?

What temp is your CPU running at? What cooler do you have?
 
Wegason said:
Do you have precision boost overdrive enabled?

Did you enable XMP in your BIOS so your RAM is running at its rated speed?

You mentioned OW settings at all low, does that include dynamic reflections being off?

What temp is your CPU running at? What cooler do you have?
Click to expand...

I don't think so, should I?
Yip
Yip. Literally the lowest of the low
Temp is around 55c when playing. Stock cooler.

What I did was buy some ridiculously expensive RAM since I trusted my analysis that it was this as the problem: F4-3600C15D-16GTZ

My problems have now basically vanished. My averages are around 285 over a full game and once I went down to 235 but this is a ridiculosly better ratings than I had previously. I've literally gained 40fps going from 3200 to 3600Mhz.

I'm thinking now I should try and bump the RAM up by like 200Mhz to squueze out that minimum. It's looking like every 200Mhz I can increase fps by 15-20. That will get me my minimum 240 at all times incase 5 people use ultimates at the same time.
 
GregI said:
I'm thinking now I should try and bump the RAM up by like 200Mhz to squueze out that minimum. It's looking like every 200Mhz I can increase fps by 15-20. That will get me my minimum 240 at all times incase 5 people use ultimates at the same time.
Click to expand...

Have a look at Ryzen memory calc software, something for that gives you timings. You might benefit now more from tighter timings at 3600 than an increase in speed. If I recall correctly there's an internal clock on Ryzens memory controller that changes once you go beyond 3600 which affects performance.
 
I am on 144HZ but I would not say no to 165HZ or 200HZ as it means I can leave off any Sync options that can add lag (I use Nvidia Fast Sync but I know it can act up in some games), I hate V-sync.

I know the pro gamers love 240HZ TN's and now we have 360HZ with 1000HZ in the pipeline which is all about trying to get the motion to look better like on CRT/Plasma, even OLED does not look as natural as those two older techs.
 
Honestly if I knew how bad Ryzen was at high frame rates, I would have went with the 6 year old Intel socket. When I was researching stuff, Ryzen 3600 was always comparable to the current Intel chips in framerates around 150 or so. I just assumed going higher wouldn't be much of a problem and incorrectly guessed 2666Mhz Intel would be inferior to 3200Mhz Ryzen for frame rates. I've seen Intel CPUs worse than mine hit 280+ with 2666Mhz. I've had to buy RAM 1000Mhz higher speed to even come close to matching it

The only positive thing I can say about this Ryzen chip is that I've been able to run a stock cooler and not worry about overclocking an Intel CPU and making sure I don't kill it.

I can't be that butthurt though. It's made me realise I need to do more thorough investigation into the subject for my particular usage scenario and if I'm being brutally honest, I think targeting these frame rates isn't that much of a necessity especially when 2k is going to be my next purchase (really good IPS 2K 165Hz screens from Viewsonic coming soon). It makes more sense to target say 180fps on a 165Hz 2k screen which even on my 3200Mhz RAM, Overwatch was doing easily. I just have to hope in future games start using more CPU threads to make my Ryzen investment less painful. If any rich person wants to fork me over £1000 to restart an Intel build hit me up :P
 
If you get 200-300fps on low settings then your system isn’t strong enough full stop, you would need a new graphics card minimum to start with and going intel wouldn’t guarantee improvements.

you have a system that gets over 200fps in demanding like games, so don’t get the problem as some people can’t even get 100 lol, you wouldn’t need to worry about 240hhz or whatever, the game will still look really good and fast.
 
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