When is memory speed wasted?

[NJG319]

Most CPUs that I found could support at most 3200 GHz, so does that mean that buying memory any faster than that is useless? Thank you for your time, sorry if this is a stupid question.

[Prodigy_Smit]

1 minute ago, NJG319 said:

3200 GHz,

Mhz

2 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

any faster than that is useless?

CPU's can support faster but generally 3600MHz is what most people buy and are able to use well. Certain applications need faster memory such as 4400MHz

[JoostinOnline]

Your motherboard is usually what limits the speed, not the CPU, so you should check that. 3200MHz is usually where people consider the price/performance ratio to be at its best though.

[NJG319]

6 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Your motherboard is usually what limits the speed, not the CPU, so you should check that. 3200MHz is usually where people consider the price/performance ratio to be at its best though.

Thanks for the advice, but if CPUs can support more than 3200 MHz, then why is that listed as the system memory specification? I’m guessing I’m misinterpreting what that means?

[emosun]

2 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

Thanks for the advice, but if CPUs can support more than 3200 MHz, then why is that listed as the system memory specification? I’m guessing I’m misinterpreting what that means?

because thats a system limitation not a cpu limitation

[JoostinOnline]

7 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

Thanks for the advice, but if CPUs can support more than 3200 MHz, then why is that listed as the system memory specification? I’m guessing I’m misinterpreting what that means?

Where are you reading this?

[LIGISTX]

4 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

Thanks for the advice, but if CPUs can support more than 3200 MHz, then why is that listed as the system memory specification? I’m guessing I’m misinterpreting what that means?

Where is that listed? DDR4 “runs at 2133”, some sticks “run at 2400”. Anything beyond that is an overclock and technically out of spec. That said... with all of the advances in DDR4 yields since it was first released, 3200-3600 is fairly easy to get out of it. 
 

That said, CPU memory controllers and mobo layouts/topology/engineering are not always capable of running “crazy fast” speeds. Typically 3600 isn’t an issue, but that also isn’t a guarantee. And in most applications, 3200-3600 is the sweet spot of price to performance. Faster doesn’t net much gain, just costs more...

[NJG319]

I misunderstood what I was looking at. I was looking at the system memory specification on the CPU, which isn’t the maximum speed at which memory can run. The motherboard determines that apparently. Thanks for the help.

[LIGISTX]

21 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

The motherboard determines that apparently. Thanks for the help.

The quality of the CPU’s IMC (integrated memory controller) also limits it. 

[svmlegacy]

42 minutes ago, Smit Devrukhkar said:

Mhz

> MT/s

Real frequency is half the transfer frequency.

 

24 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

I misunderstood what I was looking at. I was looking at the system memory specification on the CPU, which isn’t the maximum speed at which memory can run. The motherboard determines that apparently. Thanks for the help.

It's a combination of a lot of things.

JEDEC says 2400 is max.

AMD Zen 2 says 3200

Motherboards claim 4400+

Memory says 3600, or whatever you buy.

 

The real answer is: These are guaranteed minimums for each component. It can go as fast as the weakest link.

XMP is an extension to JEDEC, and refers to the DIMM's.

3600 is an overclock on Zen 2 that most CPU's can manage.

Motherboards are just kinda... meeeh, here's a number.

 

So the true answer is that it depends on your specific hardware. Generally the CPU is the slowest number, and is what gets overclocked.

[Drama Lama]

35 minutes ago, NJG319 said:

Thanks for the advice, but if CPUs can support more than 3200 MHz, then why is that listed as the system memory specification? I’m guessing I’m misinterpreting what that means?

Warranty 

 

manufactures want 100% of their cpus to run at the advertised memory speed and not 99.9% 

 

so usually ram runs even at far greater speeds than it says in the cpu specification ( unless the memory is purposely limited by the chipset like intel b460 )