Timespy scales well with memory also not just cores. Example; I'm timespy bottlenecked because my mobo is really bad at frequency scaling on 2 dimms. It hits at wall at 3600mhz. So going from 5.2 to 5.3ghz is only worth a ~ hundred points.
Most of the people running 9900k's stock and with xmp ram will perform to the average. If I could get CL16/4133mhz which is standard for a high end z390 board, I'd be in the mid 13k range instead of low 13k.
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/40886806
Thats what I have found as well. The RAM speed and timings are worth more than the core clock speed. So I have focused on the RAM. You could find that if you lower the clock speed, then you "may" get better RAM overclocking. Could be that the RAM is Dual rank or in the wrong slots. Could be you are T-topology (Gigabyte?) and not daisy chained. Just sheer bad luck etc.
The clock speed increase is just a few points, even for the 3800x. Most people won't even tune the RAM, just install it and leave it at the kits settings. A stock 9900ks is 10700 cpu points in time spy. Add a 3600 RAM kit and you hit approx 11400. 5.3GHz and you hit 12k time spy cpu. You can tighten the timing after that.
Note the stock RAM for the 9900k is DDR4-2666 anything above that is overclocking. You are not bottlenecked by not getting above 3600 (1800MHz). You have simply reached the limit of the IMC/RAM overclock.
There is something wrong with many of the time spy scores. There is a 3800x that gets 12700 cpu points with crap RAM and underclocked cores, 3000 RAM not the stock 3200. AgentNardz then calls it "Stock".
https://www.3dmark.com/spy/8538557
This is the top 9900ks
https://www.3dmark.com/spy/9118396
CPU Score 13950 5,404 MHz Patriot Memory DDR4 @ 4,400 MHz
9900ks 13213
https://www.3dmark.com/spy/9132256
The 13200 you gave above. What would it take?
CPU Score 13213 5,303 MHz Kingston DDR4 @ 3,998 MHz
These are both in the top 100 9900ks cpu's. Almost everyone is not getting this level of performance in time spy cpu. Average is 11700.