Memory overclocking:
For once, we’re going to start our overclocking tests with the memory. As this card is mainly dedicated to memory, we shouldn’t have any trouble overclocking our Ryzen 9 9950X3D.
Installing the G.SKILL 6000 MT/s CL26 kit :
It’s when it comes to memory overclocking, of course, that we should see differences, thanks to the unique presence of two memory slots compared with four for “traditional” models. For this series of tests, we’ve decided to use the best kit currently available to us, the G.SKILL Trident Z5 NEO RGB 6000 MT/s CL26. We’d like to pause for a moment before beginning our tests. To get the best results, two other components are equally important. Your processor must have a good IMC to support high frequencies, and a memory kit with excellent chips. Both are equally important for memory overclocking!
Profiles in the MSI BIOS :
Within the BIOS, there are a number of options available to everyone, which allow a certain gain in memory. The first is the “Optimized Performance Profile”, which will vary according to the chips in your memory kit…
Unfortunately, with our G.SKill kit clocked at 6000 MT/s CL26, it’s hard to beat this. It is therefore not worth activating this option here, but depending on your memory kit, it could prove interesting.
Other options are also available, including “Latency Killer”, “High-Efficiency Mode” and “Memory Timing Preset”, which, once activated and set to Tightest for the latter, will give you better performance. You can see below, on the left, the original performance and, on the right, the performance after modifying these three options.
Finally, MSI also offers several profiles via the “Memory Try It!” option, but the only one we tested at 8800 MT/s didn’t pass muster. As for 6000 MT/s, there are two CL28 profiles which could prove interesting for users with kits with higher timings.
Aida 64:
This is a program that can provide you with a wealth of information about your configuration, but above all it has a memory benchmark. This calculates the read, write and copy speeds, as well as the latency, of your memory kit. It is often used to compare memory kits. It’s an excellent tool if you want to compare the performance of your memory kit with those we’ve already tested.
We were able to overclock our memory kit to 8600 MT/s in CL32 and with a 2167 MHz FCLK, as was the case with the ROG Crosshair X870E APEX motherboard. Here’s the performance gain under AIDA64 Memory Benchmark.
As you can see, throughput has improved significantly. We could have further optimized latency via the BIOS option. At present, we’ve managed to reach 8700 MT/s, but without being able to pass benchmarks.
We will now evaluate performance under Geekbench 3. As a reminder, only the memory kit is overclocked, while the processor is still at its original frequencies.
There’s a noticeable gain in both single and multi-score. The memory score has also improved. The idea here is to highlight the qualities of our MSI B850 MPOWER in terms of memory overclocking. This will be particularly useful for those taking part in overclocking competitions on Hwbot, for example. Ordinary users won’t need it.
