motherboard quality and ram stability

[vamplookguy]

I was wondering if super expensive mother boards that support like 7800mt ram and better than that motherboards are they more stable for some reason when running more sticks of ram and if the ultra expensive mother boards are more stable in genral for ram

[rippy4500]

The max speed rating doesn't really mean much, my board "supports" 7600MHz DDR5 but I can't get that stable no matter what despite having A-Die memory which is capable of 8000+.

Actual 7800MT+ ram requires a 1 DPC motherboard or only 2 sticks to easily achieve, the best board for that is probably the ASUS Z790 Apex Encore but it's expensive and 1DPC means you cap out at 96GB, and i'm not sure how much it helps with high capacity dimms. But it would technically be the best probably if you use a 2X32 or 2X48 kit.

4 slot boards will cap out at 7200-7600 with 2 slots and if you actually use all 4 slots it'll probably be even lower. Any high end 2DPC board will be similar and the max overclocks between them shouldn't perform noticeably different. Any high end Strix or Aorus board should be similar, I heard the Asrock z790 nova is also good.

[RONOTHAN##]

5 hours ago, vamplookguy said:

I was wondering if super expensive mother boards that support like 7800mt ram and better than that motherboards are they more stable for some reason when running more sticks of ram and if the ultra expensive mother boards are more stable in genral for ram

Yes but actually no. 

 

There's two main factors of the motherboard's max memory speed are the memory topology and the BIOS training algorithm. More expensive motherboards tend to have more PCB layers which makes designing better topologies significantly easier. That said, a lot of the time motherboard manufacturers will just share the same memory topology across multiple boards (the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Xtreme X has the same memory topology as the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite X, a board that costs 1/3 as much), so these super high end boards aren't really as better as you might think they'd be. As for the BIOS training algorithm, this requires a lot of work in order for it to be fully optimized, and since the uber-expensive boards don't sell as well, they tend to focus the dev time on more common boards that sell much better, so these super high end boards don't get as many optimizations and thus don't do as well as you'd hope. 

 

I should also point out that the CPU's memory controller plays a big roll in what the memory speed you can expect will be. If you get lucky with a CPU that has an insanely good memory controller, it doesn't really matter much what motherboard you have, you'll be able to run very high frequency. On the other hand, if you get a CPU with a potato memory controller, it doesn't matter if you have the best motherboard ever, you'll struggle to get anything close to the memorboard's listed max speed. Because of the CPU memory controller, I wouldn't even bother looking at the motherboard's max supported speed as it's always done with a top 1% CPU and very unlikely to translate to what you'll actually see. 

 

Then there's the issue with 4 DIMMs. There are actually tradeoffs when designing a motherboard topology around 4 DIMM configurations, where the better you design it for 4 DIMMs, the worse it gets for 2 DIMMs and vice versa. Because of this, the listed support for 2 DIMM max memory is going to be completely irrelevant for 4 DIMM max memory speed. I would just avoid 4 DIMM setups all together if you can avoid it though, even in the best case scenario these are finicky to get working correctly and will likely require trying a few different BIOS revisions to get it working properly. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 hour ago, RONOTHAN## said:

As for the BIOS training algorithm, this requires a lot of work in order for it to be fully optimized, and since the uber-expensive boards don't sell as well, they tend to focus the dev time on more common boards that sell much better, so these super high end boards don't get as many optimizations and thus don't do as well as you'd hope. 

welp thats abit worrying considering the only better boards i have available are the x58a ud7 and g1 assassin

 

dont they usually share bios optimizations though? usually via sharing a common bios

 

if the bioses were completely different from one another then i wouldnt be able to simply just crossflash bioses yet i can flash my p5q to a p5q premium if i put a 2mb chip on it and my old p6t to a p6x58d premium

 

i mean yeah sometimes things do break like the latter where some usb ports on the rear stop working but considering it still runs and boots its gotta be a common bios

 

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I should also point out that the CPU's memory controller plays a big roll in what the memory speed you can expect will be. If you get lucky with a CPU that has an insanely good memory controller, it doesn't really matter much what motherboard you have, you'll be able to run very high frequency. On the other hand, if you get a CPU with a potato memory controller, it doesn't matter if you have the best motherboard ever, you'll struggle to get anything close to the memorboard's listed max speed. Because of the CPU memory controller, I wouldn't even bother looking at the motherboard's max supported speed as it's always done with a top 1% CPU and very unlikely to translate to what you'll actually see. 

i think this mainly matters on intel atm with the ridicolously inconsistent imc where some can hit 8800 while others are stuck at 7600

 

looking at amd boards seems like those are pretty conservative given most of the ryzen cpus seem to be capable of 7600-8000 with the apus being capable of 10000+ albiet stability id assume somewhere around 8400-9000 considering the x670e gene is only rated for 8000 with the b650m hdv rated for 7200

 

with just a set of a die im pretty sure most ppl should be able to hit the rated freqs on amd albiet itll probably take some time to stabilize just because high freq is pretty finicky

 

potato imcs are pretty frustrating when you get them though, could just be overall trash or have an infuriating limit like my w3680 seemingly not being able to stabilize >2850 on the innermost channel while the others are stable at 2900+ albiet boardlimit due to my x58a ud3r

 

board also matters usually plays a role at higher frequencies but there are also utter garbage boards that cant clock for shit, as long as it isnt known for clocking like shit you should be able to clock about as far as any other board but ofc some are still gonna be better than others especially the 1dpc boards which i honestly dont understand why they arent standard in the first place cause most ppl buying midrangers arent gonna be running 128/192gb anyways and if they can spend that cash on rams then they can spend extra on a higher end board

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

dont they usually share bios optimizations though?

They do, probably should've phrased it better. They optimized for memory topologies, so on the occasion that the do actually design a topology specifically for the higher end boards, it will likely only get a few updates before being abandoned.