Memory Overclocking on Z390 Coffee Lake: What RAM Speed Do You Need?

Rendering, Encoding, and Compression

Rendering

Although the DDR4-4400 C18 configuration took the crown in Cinebench R15, it was only 2 percent faster than DDR4-2133. As for rendering and visualization workloads, DDR4-4200 C19 was the best configuration and provided a performance increase of 5.34 percent compared to DDR4-2133.

LuxMark responded very well to high-speed memory. The DDR4-4400 C18 configuration was around 86.63 percent and 13.84 percent faster than DDR4-2133 in the OpenCL and C++ tests, respectively.

DDR4-4400 continued to dominate in the Corona 1.3. There was a 12.91 percent performance improvement when using DDR4-4400 over standard DDR4-2133. Our DDR4-4400 configuration performed up to 9 percent faster in video editing, as well.

Lastly, Blender, V-Ray, and POV-Ray didn't benefit much from faster memory as the results revealed less than a 2 percent improvement.

Encoding & Compression

The overall takeaway is that high speed memory kits can greatly improve productivity in encoding and compression tasks. For a start, using DDR4-4400 memory decreased compression times in 7-Zip up to 103.4 percent when compared to DDR4-2133. WinRAR also benefited from faster memory as DDR4-4400 performed 84.92 percent faster than DDR4-2133.

In terms of decompression, neither 7-Zip or WinRAR revealed any improvements when using memory above DDR4-2133.

In comparison to DDR4-2133, the DDR4-4400 configuration improved encoding times in HandBrake up to 36.8 percent with the X264 codec and 38.14 percent with the newer X265 codec.

On the other hand, encoding audio files is fine with memory of any speed whether it be DDR4-2133 or DDR4-4400.

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Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.