Overclocking APU or Memory Speed?

Warhorse99 · Jan 28, 2016

I recently completed building a desktop with AMD A10-7850K and Asus A88X-Pro Mobo loaded with 4x4 GB Mushkin Enhanced Redline 996996F 2133 9-11-10-28 memory.

I can OC the APU to 4.1 (from stock 3.7) but when I push the memory past 1866, it goes down with almost no load.

Am wondering if it is a board or a bios issue or is this the best I can get with this setup?

Sandstorm3000 · Jan 28, 2016

Don't overclock the RAM, really pointless in my opinion. It might give you 1-2 fps difference (Which is actually proven)

Just overclock your APU to 4.1GHz, 400MHz overclock should give you a really noticable performance increase.

navalweaponsofficer · Jan 28, 2016

At what voltage are you running your RAM? Have you checked the ram specks in CPUID? try loosing the timings some memory runs fine dual channel when one per channel but sometimes when you have two modules per channel it causes problems.

blazorthon · Jan 28, 2016

That isn't the best DDR3-2133 kit with those timings. Is it at least a 1.5V kit and not a higher voltage kit? If not, then I would expect stability problems when trying to get a good clock rate out of it. If it did work at DDR3-2133 without problems, then it would be a nice little performance boost in games at around 5% to 8% higher gaming performance. Nothing huge, but not bad.

Games will favor high frequency over low timings, although low timings do help a little bit.

Warhorse99 · Jan 28, 2016

Sandstorm3000 :

Thanks Sandstorm for the quick response. I have noticed the performance difference when OCing to 4.1 and with 1866 memory speed everything is stable and no heat issues, even under load.

This will be my BIOS standard setup.

Sandstorm3000 · Jan 28, 2016

@Warhorse99, great

@blazorthon i am curious, where did you get those numbers from than?

I have seen some benchmarks quite some time ago with different RAM speeds matched up against eachother. (I could probably find them if you want to see em)

Warhorse99 · Jan 28, 2016

blazorthon :

It is a 1.65v kit.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA85V3R95359

Warhorse99 · Jan 28, 2016

navalweaponsofficer :

It says I am running at 1.65v on all 4 slots

blazorthon · Jan 28, 2016

There's your problem. You're running a very high voltage for modern DDR3 and you have four modules. That puts a lot of strain on the memory controller and it isn't made to handle that. Don't expect to get rated memory specs under such conditions.

TJ Hooker · Jan 28, 2016

Sandstorm3000 :

The benchmarks you're thinking of probably use discrete graphics cards, which have high bandwidth, low latency VRAM. So system memory bandwidth isn't as important. Integrated graphics don't have VRAM, they rely on system RAM. So system memory bandwidth/latency becomes more important.

blazorthon · Jan 28, 2016

I looked at Tom's own benchmarks for APUs with different memory memory speeds up to DDR3-2400. On average, they saw the performance go up about two thirds of the increase in bandwidth for each step up in memory frequency with slight diminishing returns. I've also read other such tests on other sites over the years.

Sandstorm3000 · Jan 28, 2016

TJ Hooker :

Sandstorm3000 :

The benchmarks you're thinking of probably use discrete graphics cards, which have high bandwidth, low latency VRAM. So system memory bandwidth isn't as important. Integrated graphics don't have VRAM, they rely on system RAM. So system memory bandwidth/latency becomes more important.

Didn't even think about that. Very true, and ofcourse makes sense.

Warhorse99 · Jan 31, 2016

blazorthon :

I have set my voltage at 1.4 and APU OC at 4.0 and now am stable running memory at 2238.
So far so good, even with stress testing

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