What kit performs better(gear 1 vs higher MHz etc)

[wildgg]

Hi LTT,

As a heads up, I do not have much experience with ram overclocking or tuning timings.
I'm familiar with XMP and settings gear 1 or 2 in bios.

I'd like to know what would perform better of the 3. (I currently own option 1.)

1. 32GB(2x16) 3200MHz CL16 (16-18-18-36) running in Gear 1. (CMK32GX4M2E3200C16)
2. 32GB(2x16) 3600MHz CL16 (16-20-20-) running in Gear 1. (KF436C16RB1K2/32)
3. 32GB(2x16) 4000MHz CL18 (18-22-22-42) running in Gear 2 (F4-4000C18D-32GVK)

From what I've read 3600mhz will run fine on Gear 1, but 4000MHz on Gear 1 comes down to lottery so let's just assume the 3rd option will run at auto(gear2) setting.
 

PC Specs:
CPU I7-12700KF P-cores: 5.1ghz/E-cores:3.8ghz 1.29V LLC:Turbo
MOBO Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X
COOLING Noctua NH-D15
RAM Corsair Vengeance 32GB 2x16 3200mhz CL16
GPU Asus RTX 3080 TUF Gaming OC (undervolted at 0.925v at 1980MHz)(+300 Memory clock)
PSU EVGA 850 G2
CASE Fractal design Torrent white TG
SSD Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
Windows 10 version:21H2

Thx in advance.

[RONOTHAN##]

3600 Gear 1 is the fastest by far. Gear 2 has such a performance penalty that it doesn't start to perform better than 3600 Gear 1 bandwidth wise until you get into the range of 4400MT/s, and it never is able to overtake it in terms of latency. If you're doing something that uses a ton of memory bandwidth, say very large video renders, then Gear 2 at say 4800MT/s might be able to outperform 3800MT/s Gear 1 tight timings, but for a traditional gaming setup Gear 1 all the way. 

 

Whether or not it's worth the upgrade is a different story. I'd argue it isn't and you're better off saving up for your next system upgrade rather than this RAM upgrade that you're realistically not going to notice the difference of. 

 

8 minutes ago, Wildgg said:

From what I've read 3600mhz will run fine on Gear 1

It's a little more complicated than that. It's usually fine, though Gigabyte's Z690 DDR4 memory topology is terrible, so 3600 CL16 Gear 1 with dual rank memory is about the limits of the board without doing some manual tuning. If this was any other board that speed would be trivial, but Gigabyte really screwed up their Z690 memory support. 

[wildgg]

14 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

3600 Gear 1 is the fastest by far. Gear 2 has such a performance penalty that it doesn't start to perform better than 3600 Gear 1 bandwidth wise until you get into the range of 4400MT/s, and it never is able to overtake it in terms of latency. If you're doing something that uses a ton of memory bandwidth, say very large video renders, then Gear 2 at say 4800MT/s might be able to outperform 3800MT/s Gear 1 tight timings, but for a traditional gaming setup Gear 1 all the way. 

 

Whether or not it's worth the upgrade is a different story. I'd argue it isn't and you're better off saving up for your next system upgrade rather than this RAM upgrade that you're realistically not going to notice the difference of. 

 

It's a little more complicated than that. It's usually fine, though Gigabyte's Z690 DDR4 memory topology is terrible, so 3600 CL16 Gear 1 with dual rank memory is about the limits of the board without doing some manual tuning. If this was any other board that speed would be trivial, but Gigabyte really screwed up their Z690 memory support. 

Thank you for the reply!

It would've beeen worth it to me as I'm planning to use this system for as long as i can and I was thinking I might as well get the best ram kit for it, both options are pretty cheap atm.

But what you're saying makes 100% sense though, I like this board as it's been nice to me for CPU overclocking and simple use of the bios, I remember having to update the bios to even make my current ram kit run with XMP so I can imagine higher end kits can cause more issues..

I'll stick to my current kit.