Understanding RAM speed and latency can help boost system performance.
Understanding RAM speed and latency can help boost system performance.
Hello everyone, I wanted to share some thoughts on this. At first, I focused only on capacity and memory technology when choosing RAM, which is why I didn’t realize how much I was missing out on. Recently, I built my own system and experimented with overclocking the CPU and GPU. I started looking into RAM tuning and found videos showing impressive results. I set up my Ryzen 5 3600 with two 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 modules at 3600 MHz. The latency values were 18-22-22-42. I chose that speed because I believed faster clocks meant better performance. While this idea holds some truth, I’ve noticed that tweaking timing and other BIOS settings can still make a difference, even if the gains aren’t huge. I haven’t explored deeper into the BIOS settings yet, but I’m curious to see if small adjustments really help. Thanks for your understanding!
I don't really understand how much these timings affect everyday computing tasks. However, for RAM speed, it's usually recommended to stay under 3600 cycles per second, since the Infinity Fabric runs at the actual RAM frequency until around 1800MHz (the DDR clock speed is half of what's listed on the box), and going above that can significantly slow things down.
Thanks! I just saw a Linus video from some time ago that clearly covered this topic.
I've noticed a clear improvement in performance by using my RAM at 3400 rather than the standard 2133. However, my system feels very off-balance and my GPU is heavily limited by the CPU. While I can't say for sure how your setup works, faster RAM seems to have a bigger impact than it did before. Running at 3600 instead of the usual 3200 probably won't change much, but it's better than nothing.
The biggest gains come from upgrading from 2x8 to 4x8, especially in games that benefit from higher frame rates or low latency such as fps titles and memory-intensive experiences like SOTTR hitman and Total Wars. These are just estimates, but moving from cl18 to cl14 at 3600Hz typically adds around 3-5%, while going from 3600 to 4000Hz is about 1%. It's usually only worthwhile for the very highest-end GPUs (3080, 90, 6900xt). If you can keep your existing RAM stable, you'll get better performance without extra cost.
I believe the rest is accurate, yet switching from single to dual channel might boost performance by up to 20%.