Laptop Memory Speeds - CPU-Z

nheather

nheather

nheather

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Hi,

Just got myself a laptop - not for gaming, just for office work and to support my hobbies - 3D Printing, Radio Control and programming.

It has 8GB of DDR4 3200 fitted, the CPU is an Intel i5.

Ran up CPU-Z to look at how it is running and I realise that I don’t understand what it is telling me with respect to the memory.

I was expecting it to say 1600MHz, but it jumps around between 532 and 1333. There are also three memory frequency values

Memory Controller Frequency
Uncore Frequency
DRAM Frequency

What do all of these mean - I was expecting to see just one, 1600 which equates to the 3200 specified rating.

In the past I’ve dealt with desktops with unlocked BIOS so I have selected a memory profile and left it to that.

With the laptop I can see the different profiles in CPU-Z but that is moot because the laptop BIOS is so locked down there is nothing that I can change about the memory.

I assume the frequency is jumping around because the CPU has a dynamic clock speed that adjusted depending on load - is that correct.

Any way of fixing the RAM at 1600 or is that pretty pointless.

Also a question about upgrade. This laptop has 8GB (2x4GB) of RAM, I was intending to get one with 16GB but this was too good a deal to pass up and I figured that I would upgrade if needed. But thinking about it, as I won’t be gaming, is there any point to upgrading, is 8GB more than enough for what I need.
 
Not knowing the specific laptop or i5 my guess on the fluctuating clocks is down to speedstep doing its thing. Can't say I have ever seen the memory (DRAM) speed drop though. I would imagine the 1333 being seen is down to the 3200 clocking down to 2666 which may be the max the CPU / platform can support. Generally speaking laptop memory is constrained by the JEDEC specification rather than any XMP profiles (unless high(er) end Intel platforms). I know this is certainly a thing on my Legion which will only run the memory at 3200 if it is actually 3200 JEDEC and not just 3200 via XMP.
 
Here are a couple of screenshots taken within a few seconds of each other

K1edBs7.png

BYvlO7y.png

The DRAM speed is constantly swapping between 1596 and 1330 every few seconds it seems.

The i5 is a 1235U which supports 3200 RAM

The CPU core speed jumps around too. I imagine that it is a dynamic speed control which changes depending on load and I guess the memory speed changes with it. I was aware of that but didn't expect that it would change so often.

Also the RAM speed doesn’t simply jump between 1600 and 1330, it will go done to 1000 and various speeds up to 1600 - what I observe is that FSB:RAM ratio changes constantly (every few seconds) and the appropriate JEDEC profile is displayed.
 
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Huh, I've never seen that before. Ratio and timings apparently also changing which usually requires a restart.

Can you download HWiNFO64 and see what both the summary and sensor window says about RAM?
 
Just tried HWINFO64, it shows the same as CPU-Z, the memory frequency is constantly changing - jumping between different JEDEC profiles.

I've got a video but can't work out how to show it on here
 
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Now I'm curious to know the exact model number for the laptop, if it really is a DDR4 feature I did not know it was possible.

Assuming it boosts properly when the laptop is under significant load then it shouldn't hurt performance. For gaming if it uses the IGP then it could affect it as it's more bandwidth reliant but CPU I would imagine should be mostly fine.
 
Dg834man said:
It's working as intended, it's pretty cool, knew ddr4 systems could do this but never seen it in action.
Click to expand...
My thoughts too, because the Laptop never skips a beat. When I run benchmarks it does exactly as expected. If the memory was faulty is misconfigured then I would expect that to show in the stability and benchmarks.

I guess I would need to run something really intensive to get the RAM to switch up to 1600MHz.
 
I think I have confirmed that it does throttle the memory depending on the demand.

I've just run the PassMark memory tests with CPU-Z open at the same time.

When the tests were running the RAM speed jumped up to 1600MHz and mostly stayed there while the tests were running.
 
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