B350 Ryzen/RAM Question

[Grimm Spector]

I was perusing a B350 manual from ASUS, and it said due to Ryzen processor limitation, more than DDR4-2666 is supported by one DIMM per channel only.

 

Now I find that wording a tad vague, does this mean if I throw in 4 sticks of DDR4-3200 it's only going to use one per channel? Or that it's only going to run them at 2666 Mhz??

[SquintyG33Rs]

it will only run 2666MHz.. but it's weird because this depends on the integrated memory controller not the motherboard. and your results may vary. i think they want to be on the safe side, you could get lucky and get 4 dimms working though

[Grimm Spector]

12 minutes ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

it will only run 2666MHz.. but it's weird because this depends on the integrated memory controller not the motherboard. and your results may vary. i think they want to be on the safe side, you could get lucky and get 4 dimms working though

I find that frustrating, but at least it works how I suspected. So it's purely based on the CPU, and not the chipset...guess I can save a buck on RAM and grab some cheaper RAM?

[SquintyG33Rs]

1 hour ago, Grimm Spector said:

I find that frustrating, but at least it works how I suspected. So it's purely based on the CPU, and not the chipset...guess I can save a buck on RAM and grab some cheaper RAM?

i would honestly recommend sticking with 2 dimms because the faster speed really really boosts performance

[SupaKomputa]

totally agree with this video, anything over 2666mhz would be overpriced.

 

get the cheaper ram, more capacity, or more cores or better gpu.

 

[Grimm Spector]

17 hours ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

i would honestly recommend sticking with 2 dimms because the faster speed really really boosts performance

Most of what I've found suggests a minimal performance boost, perhaps a couple of frames in a CPU bound game, versus nothing in a GPU bound one. Any evidence to the contrary I could read?

 

7 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

totally agree with this video, anything over 2666mhz would be overpriced.

 

get the cheaper ram, more capacity, or more cores or better gpu.

 

Yea, that's what I'm thinking. Sadly I can't find 2666 for the RAM I want, only 2400 or 3000, 3200. May just have to go with something less attractive.

[SquintyG33Rs]

4 hours ago, Grimm Spector said:

Most of what I've found suggests a minimal performance boost, perhaps a couple of frames in a CPU bound game, versus nothing in a GPU bound one. Any evidence to the contrary I could read?

 

Yea, that's what I'm thinking. Sadly I can't find 2666 for the RAM I want, only 2400 or 3000, 3200. May just have to go with something less attractive.

we're talking about ryzen here though. so that video does not apply

[Grimm Spector]

17 hours ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

we're talking about ryzen here though. so that video does not apply

 

I don't get my information from just one site, but do you know of any proper testing that's shown that it does make a substantial difference? I would love to read up if you do.

[SupaKomputa]

I think the video also covers Ryzen. And you can find similar results in most of the video in youtube.

If you have the numbers that tells otherwise, please let me know.

 

I love how linus points out other ways to spend the extra cost rather than chasing top mhz.

[SquintyG33Rs]

1 hour ago, Grimm Spector said:

 

I don't get my information from just one site, but do you know of any proper testing that's shown that it does make a substantial difference? I would love to read up if you do.

i've tested it myself and i think level1techs did the best job testing it. most outlets have done a terrible job at this apart from saying ryzen benefits from faster ram.

 

let me clarify:

 

the faster RAM only gives a boost to the CPU performance and only in multi-threaded tasks. because what it does is dictate the infinity fabric speed. that's what's called uncore on intel chips. basically everything that isn't the cores.

So for me, doing 3D rendering and gaming while streaming or other such tasks, this is really important and scales almost 1 to 1 so  2133 to 3200 is a 33% increase in performance.

 

but a pure gamer will have to look at what games he plans to play and see how reliant on CPU those are.

 

PUBG still very CPU reliant (even with 1.0 upcoming update on beta servers)

but most AAA games will only see a 50% or so scaling so the previous example will only boost your FPS by 15% because it's much more GPU bound.

 

therefore if you are paying significantly more for the faster RAM for gaming it makes much more sense to put that cash towards a better GPU.

 

the RAM prices i've seen weren't so different though. between a basic Ripjaws V and a faster one it's only 10$~20$.

so not enough to get the next tier GPU.

 

hope this helps you understand the number you will come across in benchmarks

[Grimm Spector]

1 minute ago, SquintyG33Rs said:

i've tested it myself and i think level1techs did the best job testing it. most outlets have done a terrible job at this apart from saying ryzen benefits from faster ram.

 

let me clarify:

 

the faster RAM only gives a boost to the CPU performance and only in multi-threaded tasks. because what it does is dictate the infinity fabric speed. that's what's called uncore on intel chips. basically everything that isn't the cores.

So for me, doing 3D rendering and gaming while streaming or other such tasks, this is really important and scales almost 1 to 1 so  2133 to 3200 is a 33% increase in performance.

 

but a pure gamer will have to look at what games he plans to play and see how reliant on CPU those are.

 

PUBG still very CPU reliant (even with 1.0 upcoming update on beta servers)

but most AAA games will only see a 50% or so scaling so the previous example will only boost your FPS by 15% because it's much more GPU bound.

 

therefore if you are paying significantly more for the faster RAM for gaming it makes much more sense to put that cash towards a better GPU.

 

the RAM prices i've seen weren't so different though. between a basic Ripjaws V and a faster one it's only 10$~20$.

so not enough to get the next tier GPU.

 

hope this helps you understand the number you will come across in benchmarks

I can see the logic here, thanks for the advice.