coercitiv
Diamond Member
- Jan 24, 2014
- 7,083
- 16,341
- 136
You buy 3200 RAM to ensure compatibility. To ensure stability for 3200 - 3600Mhz operation you normally just enable XMP in BIOS and most of the time everything is configured properly, passing stability tests. However, it's still technically an overclock and it still relies on silicon quality and properties of the memory sticks (configuration, chip types etc).Does that mean that if I buy a Ryzen 3000 series CPU I should be buying JEDEC spec'd 3200 with real DDR4-3200 chips and not memory that is factory overclocked and only DDR4-3200 through XMP if I want to ensure stability? I was thinking about buying a Ryzen 3900x and I'm wondering if I should buy some real JEDEC spec'd DDR4-3200 despite the higher latencies? Am I overthinking this XMP/JEDEC situation?
What some refrain from saying here is Intel CPUs aren't guaranteed to hit the max clocks that modern memory offers either. Just because memory makers sold 4266+ RAM a year ago did not mean that every Coffee Lake CPU was capable of going over 3866Mhz with good timings. And that was ok since nobody really needed those memory clocks on CFL anyway, not normal consumers anyway.
And what's that got to do with Zen 2? Well... let's take a look:
See the 1-2% difference between 3000 CL16 and 3200 CL14 / 3600 CL16? Want that 1%? Then take the pain, read the forums, waste the money, waste the nights, and complain like a true Anandtech member!!!