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ultima_trev
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RAM not working at advertised speeds

Sat Dec 03, 2016 2:29 pm

I recently got a 32GB DDR4-3200 kit to replace a 16GB DDR4-2400 kit.  However the system won't boot if XMP is enabled, I have to revert to the motherboard (GA-Z170-HD3 revision 1) default of 2133.  Is there specific timings I should use in manual mode so that it will work?  If 3200 for the motherboard is a stretch, is there a way to operate it at 3000, 2800 or 2666?
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Sat Dec 03, 2016 7:49 pm

ultima_trev wrote:
I recently got a 32GB DDR4-3200 kit to replace a 16GB DDR4-2400 kit. However the system won't boot if XMP is enabled, I have to revert to the motherboard (GA-Z170-HD3 revision 1) default of 2133. Is there specific timings I should use in manual mode so that it will work? If 3200 for the motherboard is a stretch, is there a way to operate it at 3000, 2800 or 2666?

Advertized, but out of spec and so far from guaranteed to work... I think you might have to fiddle around, and hopefully it'll work, though I am kinda unexpert in this area.

The CPU only supports up to 2133 on its iMC, and the motherboard's memory support page explicitly says "[w]hen running XMP at DDR4 3200 MHz or higher, the system’s stability depends on the CPU’s capabilities" i.e. you have to be lucky in the silicon lottery, for that 50% overclock to be viable.

Have you fiddled with the voltages?
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Sat Dec 03, 2016 8:32 pm

Run CPUZ and note the 4 main timings for the various speeds.
Try them out-Good idea to try with only 2 dims at first.
When you get a failure you can increase voltage(absolute min) and keep trying.

Google is your friend-Search for a review of your exact ram and see what settings they are using.
good luck.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Sat Dec 03, 2016 9:51 pm

The motherboard and memory controller are possible limitations.

Honestly, you shouldn't worry too much about it. Memory bandwidth and latency are moot points for the most part for majority of mainstream workloads. If you want to squeeze a little more performance out of your CPU/memory. You should try to run the memory at 2133/2400Mhz with more aggressive timings.
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ultima_trev
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Dec 05, 2016 1:23 am

Looks like the most I can hope to get out of this is 12-12-12-24 at 2400 or 11-11-11-22 at 2133 according to Tom's Hardware, but even those timings introduced a bit of instability for me.  Running the multiplier at 2.666, 2.8, 3.0 or 3.2 is apparently not an option for either my mobo or CPU... At least at the XMP default of 1.35V anywho.  Not sure if it's worth it to overvolt at this point since 1.35 is supposedly the max "safe" voltage.

I just hope I don't become too system limited in MMO or RTSs when I get my GTX 1080 from Newegg tomorrow.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:11 am

ultima_trev wrote:
I just hope I don't become too system limited in MMO or RTSs when I get my GTX 1080 from Newegg tomorrow.

I don't get this. You will have (1) a very high-end current generation GPU, (2) a 20% overclocked, already fast, current-generation desktop CPU, and (3) more RAM than is needed running at the highest clock the CPU supports.

If you run multiple games and find they are "too system-limited", it's either because the games you're picking are all unreasonably demanding on CPU, RAM or GPU, i.e. effectively require future hardware, or because your storage or software is the issue.

Assuming your sig isn't wrong, the weak point in that system looks like the storage: a very small and low-end for the time and now 3.5-years old Kingston V300, hopefully not one of the 2.5 years old but much slower revisions, and a 1TB WD Blue, looks like a bottle-nack waiting to happen.

Probably too late now to return the new RAM, but personally if it's an option I'd do so and revert the system to the (already OC'd) 16GB DDR4-2400 and put the money you used on the 32GB DDR4-3200 kit to replace the V300 with something fast and having enough space to install the games on to.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:30 am

I assume this is an 8x4 kit... have you tried running with just 2 sticks installed? Odds of successful RAM OC go down when you fill all the slots. Not sure what you need 32GB for anyway, unless you're running multiple VMs.

I also agree that RAM probably isn't your bottleneck.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Dec 05, 2016 10:11 am

Krogoth wrote:
The motherboard and memory controller are possible limitations.

Honestly, you shouldn't worry too much about it. Memory bandwidth and latency are moot points for the most part for majority of mainstream workloads. If you want to squeeze a little more performance out of your CPU/memory. You should try to run the memory at 2133/2400Mhz with more aggressive timings.

This.
DDR4 provides plenty of bandwidth, I would certainly aim to get the most aggressive timings you possibly can at 2133, since latency is likely to be the biggest performance bottleneck at those speeds anyway.
Back in the Ivy/Haswell era, the bandwidth limitations of DDR3 1333MHz became apparent, and there were significant gains to get from buying 1600MHz, and to some extent 1866MHz RAM kits a few years back. As always, performance scaling was far from linear and the the tight-timing 1866 kits were generally faster than looser-timings on 2133 kits. Clocking your RAM up to 2400 or higher may provide miniscule performance advantages, but the bulk of your potential gains at those >2GHz clockspeeds are going to be from lowering the latency through tighter timings.
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ultima_trev
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Dec 06, 2016 1:19 am

I managed to get the kit running at 2400.  I tried to shoot for 12-12-12-24 however backed down to 14-14-14-28 to get it to run stable.  It's actually better than the 18-18-18-36 that my last kit was (not that I bothered with memory timing adjustments at the time since that kit was only rated for 2133).

To answer JBI's question, it's a 2x 16 kit.  It's also not a "need" more so just "want," same for the HDR 4K TV and GTX 1080.

As for storage bottleneck, I do have a vacant M.2 slot on the mobo and plan on putting it to use soon.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Dec 06, 2016 2:55 am

I did manage to get some Corsair DDR4-3000 running at ~3000 on a Z170-AR with a 6700K, but I couldn't tell you how I did it.

Does really seem like it's luck of the draw.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Dec 06, 2016 4:19 am

ultima_trev wrote:
To answer JBI's question, it's a 2x 16 kit.  It's also not a "need" more so just "want," same for the HDR 4K TV and GTX 1080.

Ahh, OK. Were the old DIMMs perhaps single-sided, whereas the new ones are double-sided? That can also cause OCability to take a hit since you've got double the load on the memory bus.

I do have to wonder though... unless you're actually utilizing more than 16GB, 16GB @3200 is probably gonna be better than 32GB @2400 most of the time, performance-wise.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:40 am

Airmantharp wrote:
I did manage to get some Corsair DDR4-3000 running at ~3000 on a Z170-AR with a 6700K, but I couldn't tell you how I did it.

Does really seem like it's luck of the draw.

Why wouldn't it be?

AFAIK there is no standard for DDR4 above 2400, and even that speed is only in spec for AMD's Bristol Ridge and Intel's Broadwell-E (and its server siblings). Any other CPU, and you're running OC'd, out of spec == luck of the draw IME.

Add in that most kits on the market which are being sold as DDR4-2666 or DDR4-3200 are running at 12.5% overvolts rather than the 1.2 V the iMC is built for, and there's the crapshoot where you pays your money and takes your chances ... Then there's the existence of all the whacky kits sold as having speeds not even mentioned by JEDEC, e.g. the 4133 kit from Corsair which puts a 1.5 V load on :roll:
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:59 am

Do you have the latest BIOS loaded? I have a Gigabyte Z170 board, and the latest BIOS, allowed me to run my ram at it's XMP settings.
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ultima_trev
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Thu Dec 08, 2016 1:46 am

It is single sided for the old RAM versus dual sided for the new.

The old kit was 2133 overclocked to 2400 although I couldn't get the old kit to work beyond 16-18-18-36 timings.  I have the new kit stable at 2400 with 15-15-15-30 timings.  

And I did update the latest mobo BIOS due to a prior issue I was having.  I think for the time it's probably safe to say my CPU OC'ed to 4.4 GHz would probably help more than any OC to the memory beyond 2400.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Thu Dec 08, 2016 7:19 am

ultima_trev wrote:
It is single sided for the old RAM versus dual sided for the new.

That is almost certainly the key issue. The additional load on the memory bus, combined with the fact that the memory controller is being pushed way beyond spec, are probably conspiring to put 3200 out of reach.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Thu Dec 08, 2016 2:09 pm

XMP memory isn't marketed very honestly.  The rating on the package isn't a lie.  It was certainly validated at the advertised speed.  The problem is the manufacturer can't validate your memory controller.

So you buy some XMP, get excited about some stupendous speeds, and then discover that it's not going to work.  Sometimes hardcore tweaking can get it to work and sometimes you find it's just an insurmountable wall.

I'm honestly surprised some vendor hasn't got sued over XMP yet.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Fri Dec 09, 2016 8:16 am

All the more reason to peg it to the CPU's max support (2133 for Skylake, 1600 for previous generations) and get the timings down instead.

Sure, you can overclock your IMC to get high bandwidth but to put it into context, 1600 CL8 outperforms or matches 2666 CL12 in all but the most obscure of bandwidth-intensive scenarios, such as IGP gaming - an oxymoron most of the time.

Anandtech had a good article on memory scaling, though it's 3 years old now and I think some of the newer titles are more bandwidth-dependent, but even so - worth a read.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:08 am

just brew it! wrote:
ultima_trev wrote:
It is single sided for the old RAM versus dual sided for the new.

That is almost certainly the key issue. The additional load on the memory bus, combined with the fact that the memory controller is being pushed way beyond spec, are probably conspiring to put 3200 out of reach.

Indeed.  This could be tested.   Run with only 1 stick for a bit.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:30 am

maxxcool wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
ultima_trev wrote:
It is single sided for the old RAM versus dual sided for the new.

That is almost certainly the key issue. The additional load on the memory bus, combined with the fact that the memory controller is being pushed way beyond spec, are probably conspiring to put 3200 out of reach.

Indeed.  This could be tested.   Run with only 1 stick for a bit.

He went from single-sided DIMMs to double-sided DIMMs, but is running with only 2 sticks (one per channel). Pulling one of them does not change the load on the other channel. Yes, it might have an effect anyway, but if it does it isn't due to memory bus loading.
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ultima_trev
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Sat Feb 25, 2017 8:28 pm

Well, after two months of fiddling around with voltage and timings I came across vccio and vccsa in the advanced voltage settings thanks to a kind fellow on /r/Intel. While I still cannot boot at 3200, I can now boot at 3000, up from 2400.

Enabled me to break 17k overall in Fire Strike and 7k overall in Time Spy. My score is now better than 90% of all results in both.

That being said, I can't wait to do it all over again when the Ryzen kit arrives!
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 3:40 am

Many times they advertise more than what the actual performance is . You need to fiddle around with the settings, as previous posters had mentioned.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 1:43 pm

Ryu Connor wrote:
XMP memory isn't marketed very honestly.  The rating on the package isn't a lie.  It was certainly validated at the advertised speed.  The problem is the manufacturer can't validate your memory controller.

So you buy some XMP, get excited about some stupendous speeds, and then discover that it's not going to work.  Sometimes hardcore tweaking can get it to work and sometimes you find it's just an insurmountable wall.

I'm honestly surprised some vendor hasn't got sued over XMP yet.


I have never owned a single stick of RAM that didn't have an XMP profile. I have never owned a single stick of RAM that ran properly when using the profile. XMP is a total waste of time (and had nothing to do with my memory purchase choices after the first few). Get slow memory with really low CAS timing instead - almost the same performance for a lot less money.

RAM speeds might finally be starting to matter again with DDR4, but we're discussing about a 10% performance delta (+5 to -5) in any case.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 4:51 pm

Vhalidictes wrote:

I have never owned a single stick of RAM that didn't have an XMP profile. I have never owned a single stick of RAM that ran properly when using the profile. XMP is a total waste of time (and had nothing to do with my memory purchase choices after the first few). Get slow memory with really low CAS timing instead - almost the same performance for a lot less money.

RAM speeds might finally be starting to matter again with DDR4, but we're discussing about a 10% performance delta (+5 to -5) in any case.


Haven't had that problem since I stopped buying corsair-Last two kits of ram were G-Skill DDR3 2133 and XMP worked fine.
Intel really needs to work on it's memory controller for DDR4-seems too finicky-with even board traces being critical
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 6:37 pm

Heretic, now that you mention it, I have had similar experiences. I've had very good results with Crucial and good results with G.Skill and other brands of memory running at the maximum advertised speed. Corsair-not so much.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:29 pm

I've always bought G.Skill or Crucial at well above JEDEC specs and XMP defaults have always worked flawlessly, for another anecdata point.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 9:19 pm

synthtel2 wrote:
I've always bought G.Skill or Crucial at well above JEDEC specs and XMP defaults have always worked flawlessly, for another anecdata point.

Yeah, same here. I've never had issues with XMP. I'm running quad-channel DDR3-2400/CL10 on an Ivy Bridge-E @ 4.5GHz. I was even able to "under"volt the memory to 1.55v without any issues. I'm honestly quite surprised at all of the reports of high speed memory not working properly in this thread.
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:35 pm

Usually I can get close, but ultimately I normally have to fiddle with something. I only really buy from Gskill or Crucial. Thread derailment - As for 2400@10 is that at 1t?
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Mon Feb 27, 2017 11:57 pm

It's really odd desktops by now still struggle at ~DDR4-3000 speeds. LPDDR4-3200 was already mainstream in 2015 and 4266 will definitely be mainstream on mobile this year.

My best guess we are hitting a speed wall on RAM in a socketable form factor; Mobile has the advantage of the SoC and RAM hooked up on a PoP package.
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:18 am

thecoldanddarkone wrote:
Thread derailment - As for 2400@10 is that at 1t?

2T
 
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Re: RAM not working at advertised speeds

Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:21 pm

thecoldanddarkone wrote:
Usually I can get close, but ultimately I normally have to fiddle with something. I only really buy from Gskill or Crucial. Thread derailment - As for 2400@10 is that at 1t?


I've been purchasing my memory from Crucial or Corsair mostly - But keep in mind that my experiences are all DDR3-based. I've don't have anything that's DDR4 yet.

Note that none of this RAM has been technically bad, it's just never matched the Profile settings on any board that supports the feature. I typically end up running them at lower speeds than rated at tighter timings than rated at the normal voltage.

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