OVERCLOCKING RAM TO REDUCE BOTTLENECk INSTEAD OF CPU

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SmexyGaming

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Specs are (Gpu: sapphire nitro rx 480 oc - Cpu: i3 3240 - Ram: 8gb ddr3 dual channel 1600mhz - Mobo: asus h-61 m-k - Hdd: 7200rpm 500 gb+1tb external hdd.) Hi fellow pc master race. So I recently purchased an oc nitro rx 480 to replace my oc 750ti. Problem is that most games run well but games like gta v, star wars battlefront in 40 player modes etc have a bottleneck. So since my mobo supports ram over clocking up to 2200mhz do u think it can help reduce some of the bottleneck? I only have a 60hz monitor so as long as I reach fps close to that I should be fine(I get 40-50 fps now). Also another question is it safe to do this? One of my ram sticks is from kingston which I trust but the other one is a complete default one without a heatsink or anything. I don't want to burn my ram stick so all support is appreciated.
 
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You can expect it to not work. Try increasing the speed the smallest increment possible. If possible, set all of the timing to be equal to or greater than what is required for the one stick designed for the higher speeds. At some point, as you increase speeds, your computer will either fail to boot or will boot but have memory errors and crash. You can increase voltage or give longer timings to try to find a stable OC.
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SmexyGaming

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Sorry about the -1it was by accident since im on a mobile device right now. So even the default ram stick would do fine with 2200mhz? Also I've seen digital foundry videos in which an increase in ram speed helped with almost a 10 fps increase when you are cpu limited.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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OC of your ram won't help in the slightest. Your issue is lack of processing power. Gta:V and Battlefront are highly cpu intensive, more so than many games and especially when dropping a 40man it's the cpu decoding those 40ppl placements long before the gpu shows you their avatars. The hyperthreading ability of the cpu will help a lot, but it has its limitations in bandwidth at high cpu loads.

The only thing that'll show any immediate gains is lowering certain cpu intensive usageses like physX or shadow intensity, viewing distances etc. It's much easier on the cpu to decode 500k blades of grass that are barely moving than 2M blades of grass that are complete with full details and shadows waving wildly in a breeze.
 
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Calculagator

Calculagator

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I rather doubt that you would be able to overclock your RAM much at all, but it wouldn't hurt to try.
The benchmarks that show RAM speed making a difference are all only showing the best case scenario when games are graphically limited by the CPU. They show a marginal increase in performance when the only bottleneck is how quickly the CPU can communicate with the GPU via RAM. The games you are playing are CPU limited because they require a lot of physics and AI processing. Making your RAM faster won't make your CPU crunch numbers faster.

You can try it, but don't expect performance miracles. If things seem dramatically faster, it's probably the placebo effect.
 
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SmexyGaming

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https://youtu.be/qksXthUcbiQ if u watch this video you can see that ram overclocking will make a difference. Now is it as good as cpu ocing definitely not. But let me just tell u this. Why do is the skylake series of cpu's the series that truly showed a huge difference from the previous generations? That's bc of ddr4. Why do you see the i3 6100 performing so well even matching previous generation i5's. It's clear that the higher ram speed is a huge factor of this.
 
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Calculagator

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The video shows that when you pair a $1000 GPU with a $100 CPU and artificially create a massive CPU bottleneck, RAM speeds matter a little. They are basically showing you the best case scenario for RAM overclocking. Even in this artificial situation it doesn't always help. Best case scenario: by massively increasing your RAM speed, you can gain a 15% performance boost. This is why most people say that RAM speed is not significant for gaming.

If RAM speed drops below a certain point, it does hurt performance. Faster RAM does give faster FPS, but in a normal situation it makes single digit percentage changes.

Skylake CPUs don't show a huge improvement over previous generations unless you consider 10% to be huge. Benchmarks of skylake using DDR3 vs DDR4 don't really confirm your hypothesis.

Go ahead and attempt the RAM overclock. I would love for you to run some benchmarks and report back what change you experience-if any.
 
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SmexyGaming

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That's exactly what I'm looking for. Only a 5-10 fps increase so I can reach fps closer to my 60hz monitor. That slight difference is huge to me in the cpu limited games and since I can't oc my cpu this is the next best option untill I upgrade my cpu. The real question is if it is safe, I am spectacle about ram ocing since I'm not experienced with it and having one ram stick without a heatsink at all I do not know what to expect.
 
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Karadjgne

Karadjgne

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Older i5's, unless talking about the higher ends like the 3570/k etc usually ran at around 3.0-3.2 GHz, unlike the i3-6100 3.7 GHz. If you look at performance of the i3 vrs the i5-6400, it kills it in anything that requires just 1-2 threads, it's only in production that the 4 core bandwidth of the i5 turns the tables. The i3 even holds its own vrs a i5-6500 in many games simply due to high processor speeds.
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/71760-intel-skylake-i5-6500-i5-6400-i3-6100-review.html
This is similar to op's issue, it's the 4 threads games at high cpu loads almost like production apps that are suffocating the cpu bandwidth, not so much with low thread games.

There's also an issue with that video, it's taking 2133MHz ram at a 4.4GHz OC and moving it to 3200MHz at 4.4GHz. That's no longer possible due to microcodes from Intel squashing any and all OC on the non k cpus, you need an original bios and original cmos on a first gen board, with no windows updates for that to happen now. Pretty much you are stuck at cpu stock clocks, which will be a limiting factor on ram OC as the MC will be stuck at default instead of the higher frequency due to BCLK ramps. You'll not get anything close to that 15fps gain anymore due to OC.
 
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Calculagator

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You can expect it to not work. Try increasing the speed the smallest increment possible. If possible, set all of the timing to be equal to or greater than what is required for the one stick designed for the higher speeds. At some point, as you increase speeds, your computer will either fail to boot or will boot but have memory errors and crash. You can increase voltage or give longer timings to try to find a stable OC.
 
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