How To Overclock AMD Ryzen CPUs

Memory Performance

Overclocking the execution cores is limited by available headroom. But if you really want to improve this platform's effectiveness, you cannot overlook the memory bus.

We begin by illustrating the gains achievable by moving from DDR4-2400 to -3200. On our Crosshair VI Hero, the 2400 MT/s is actually the default. On other motherboards, it may be lower (and not without consequence).

Cinebench R15

This test is not sensitive to memory bandwidth or latency, so the gains we measure should be trivial. Still, the influence of RAM performance is quantifiable, given a ~1.4% improvement.

Geekbench 4

This test stresses both the host processor and memory subsystem. Its single- and multi-core metrics reveal a performance increase of 5 and 6% from dialing in a faster data rate. That's quite a gain from simply modifying a multiplier setting, and memory capable of supporting 3200 MT/s isn't extremely expensive. Again, our Geekbench 4 scores are an average of three consecutive runs.

Time Spy

Graphics-bound workloads don't benefit as much from a memory bandwidth increase. We do measure a gain in the overall score, but it's very small. Conversely, the CPU-oriented benchmark jumps by 343 points.

MORE: How to Overclock a CPU

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