Ryzen - should I be forcing RAM to 3600 MHz in BIOS

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 10:27

As per the title really. I have a Ryzen 3600 and 3600 MHz RAM. Looking in the BIOS, it appears to have set itself to 2666 Mhz automatically. Should I be forcing it to 3600 MHz in the BIOS?

Not really very familiar with the workings of RAM so your guidance would be much appreciated

bremen1874 · 10 Nov 2020 at 10:30

Enable XMP.

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 10:44

bremen1874 said:
Enable XMP.

Simple as that? I guess Memtest would be good to run to check it's actually clocking up?

Edit: I believe I enabled XMP and it's coming up on Memtest as 2667 MHz

bremen1874 · 10 Nov 2020 at 10:54

If you’re willing to spend the time you might be able to find more optimised settings, but XMP will get you most of the way there.

I’d only bother with me test if it’s unstable or you’re trying to push the settings beyond XMP.

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 10:55

bremen1874 said:
If you’re willing to spend the time you might be able to find more optimised settings, but XMP will get you most of the way there.

I’d only bother with me test if it’s unstable or you’re trying to push the settings beyond XMP.

Hmm well I'm just trying to get the most out of what I paid for to be honest! Maybe I'll do some more research

bremen1874 · 10 Nov 2020 at 11:00

Enable XMP and then do your research.

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 11:00

bremen1874 said:
Enable XMP and then do your research.

Will do

SonicSW20 · 10 Nov 2020 at 11:04

If the RAM is on the QVL list then in the vast majority of cases it is as simple as enabling XMP / saving / rebooting. If the RAM is not on the QVL list then it should still work with XMP in most cases, it just that the motherboard manufacturer has not validated that specific kit.

If enabling XMP doesn't work, pay attention to what is happening in the boot process. Most motherboards have a memory "test" feature on boot where it'll try and run with the settings you've selected (in this case the XMP profile), if it cannot boot a certain amount of times in a row, it'll revert to default settings. So if its seemingly taking ages to boot after setting it and its reverted back to 2666MHz then this is probably what is happening.

Bravetart · 10 Nov 2020 at 11:05

dirtychinchilla said:
Hmm well I'm just trying to get the most out of what I paid for to be honest! Maybe I'll do some more research

If you set to XMP, that's it, your RAM will run at the speeds you paid for and as you have 3600MHz RAM, that puts you in the optimum ratio with the CPU at stock.

If you're playing games at 4k with high quality settings, tuning the RAM will likely make very little difference. If you're finding yourself CPU bound in games, e.g. if you're running 1080p and gaming competitively, it might be the difference between 180FPs vs 170FPS. Or if you want to get good benchmark scores, or increase performance in certain applications, then it might make a difference.

Really it's up to you to decide if you enjoy tinkering or just want to set it and forget it

I've only got as far as setting XMP on and that's it so far. I'm running at 5120x1440 so it's not likely to make a huge difference but I might play around more when I've got the time!

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 13:46

I just tried running MaxxMem2 on the RAM before and after enabled the A-XMP. It seems that it has worked, which isn't too surprising I guess!

Run with A-XMP disabled:

READ 27913 MByte/s
WRITE 21302 MByte/s
COPY 33012 MByte/s
LATENCY 84.2 ns

Run with A-XMP disabled:

READ 32228 MByte/s
WRITE 27446 MByte/s
COPY 37744 MByte/s
LATENCY 74.0 ns

So the gains are real! Averages at a 15% improvement, but the write speeds went up 22%!

As far as use case goes, I basically just play games on this computer, but I do like tinkering and it will get overclocked once I've got all the cooling properly sorted.

I'm just glad to see it's working as it should.

SonicSW20 · 10 Nov 2020 at 13:55

If its stable with XMP enabled (it should be), then I'd just leave it. You can potentially spend hours to unlock that final few percent via manual tuning, unless you have a specific need for it as highlighted by @Bravetart above its really not worth spending the time, enjoy it as is.

dirtychinchilla · 10 Nov 2020 at 14:00

SonicSW20 said:
If its stable with XMP enabled (it should be), then I'd just leave it. You can potentially spend hours to unlock that final few percent via manual tuning, unless you have a specific need for it as highlighted by @Bravetart above its really not worth spending the time, enjoy it as is.

Yeah to be honest, I'm quite happy with it now. I just want to check the timings are correct.

In parallel with the comments about usage case, I just ran 3DMark to see what difference it has made and the answer is absolutely none!