Educate me?

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29 Jan 2021
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So I have a laptop... the new ASUS A15.
It has 16g of ram so I'm not unduly worried about that for what I use it for, but I have read that several people have had issues (in general) upgrading ram without losing MHZ, like you can get it to go to 3600 but only in XMP profiles, yet this laptop doesn't have access to XMP, so If I put in 2 16g sticks there's a chance the ram will sit at 2666 or whatever the middle ground is.

Currently I KNOW that the ram is at 3200mhz, no idea of the timings and tbh I know very little of the timing side of things. I read somewhere that if you used higher rated ram like 3600/4000, dial back the clocks and alter the timings you can get even more performance?

I'm aware of the basics of overclocking but I always just turned on XMP and let it do the work as it usually found a nice clock that was stable without hours of learning and tinkering. Lazy I know, but it worked for me.

So the questions are:

1. If I did at some point upgrade my ram, will I have this issue of lower speeds because the ram is designed for XMP that they tend not to give laptops, or not the Tuf range.

2. The thing I read about getting way faster ram and dropping clocks and going ham with timings, what is that all that about? If someone could actually tell me or find a vid that explains it properly I would be really grateful cause I have no idea what to even look for in that respect.

3. Can XMP be forced or is that a BIOS restriction?

4. If that is a BIOS restriction, is it possible to reflash the Tuf EZ BIOS with a more tuneable RoG BIOS without suffering any stability penalties or voiding the warranty? I would ask this question on the RoG forum, but I'm still waiting for it to actually let me post.
 
I think 3200 might be the highest JEDEC spec, so that could explain why it's limited to 3200.

Manufacturer built PCs and laptops often don't have access to XMP and sometimes they can't even change the memory frequency or voltage, so if you buy 'gaming' RAM that boots at 2133 it's basically wasted compared to standard RAM that boots at a higher frequency.

If XMP is not available, you can't 'force' it enabled.

If you flash a motherboard with a more configurable BIOS then I'm pretty certain you will void the warranty (if it's even possible), but I doubt you'd find that kind of specific information here. At a minimum, the motherboards between versions would have to be near identical, otherwise the flash will brick your laptop.

Stability wise, if the laptop is built not to allow configuration and you start increasing frequencies beyond spec, it seems clear that would impact stability, but I have no idea about your laptop (if it's well-built, or not).
 
I think 3200 might be the highest JEDEC spec, so that could explain why it's limited to 3200.
Yeah if the laptop doesn't have XMP then OP would need to find ram which will run 3200mhz in JEDEC not just XMP else you could end up finding the ram now will only hit 2666 even though XMP was rated for 3200 as a guy found out in a recent thread.
 
1. If I did at some point upgrade my ram, will I have this issue of lower speeds because the ram is designed for XMP that they tend not to give laptops, or not the Tuf range.

Laptop RAM tends not to be any faster than the stuff you've got anyway, as very few companies make custom high end SODIMM for laptop upgrades.

2. The thing I read about getting way faster ram and dropping clocks and going ham with timings, what is that all that about? If someone could actually tell me or find a vid that explains it properly I would be really grateful cause I have no idea what to even look for in that respect.

If your BIOS supports custom RAM overclocking there will be a menu for it in the BIOS, usually there is one menu for enabling or disabling XMP, then another menu for custom overclocks, assuming it is supported.

3. Can XMP be forced or is that a BIOS restriction?

BIOS restriction. If your laptop advertises 3200 speeds it will be enabled by default, at least with the QVL RAM it came with.
If you're concerned try running the tool "CPU-Z". Under the "memory" section it will say "DRAM FREQUENCY", take this number and multiply it by 2 to get the advertised speed. It should likely say something like "1599.6" if XMP is enabled with 3200 RAM.

4. If that is a BIOS restriction, is it possible to reflash the Tuf EZ BIOS with a more tuneable RoG BIOS without suffering any stability penalties or voiding the warranty? I would ask this question on the RoG forum, but I'm still waiting for it to actually let me post.

No, you cannot flash a BIOS which is not created by the board vendor without some serious mods.
Even then all you'll achieve is bricking the machine unless you know there is a hacked BIOS out there that is specifically designed to do what you're suggesting, which there likely isn't.
 
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