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PC Gamers... Why did no one tell me that RAM above 2133 MHz won't function at that speed unless activated in BIOS?
- Thread starter neon/drifter
- Start date
OP
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I did some reading on this before enabling XMP and found that most common reason for crashes with XMP are when you may have RAM that is faster than what the motherboard or CPU can support. Does that sound like it might be the issue?
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The easiest way is to check on the Task Manager.
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc
More Details
Performance
Memory
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A laptop is a computer so, I'd assume so! What's your laptop model, maybe I can help look into it with you?
Pretty much this.
No. There's always been some tweaks that have been needed to be done to get everything perfect(timings, multipliers, other annoying things over the years) I've been building PC's since the mid 90's. You might be forgetting it but hasn't always been just a simple pop in. It's got way better since then for sure but there's always something.
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Just checked the manual for your PC. https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/alienware-15-r4_service-manual_en-us.pdf
Looking at the BIOS feature section on page 80, I'm not seeing anything about XMP. Being an manufacturers computer though, it's probably built and functioning as intended and you've nothing to worry about. :)
You are right, it's something I didn't realize either and I'm pretty comfortable building PCs and have been doing it for years. But I check performance stats so it stood up to me right away and then I did some research. Regardless...I didn't notice any performance issues. people blow the importance of RAM and CPUs out of proportion, these days most games are GPU limited. Other tasks besides gaming, that's different, that's where you might need the extra speed, memory and notice differences.
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*slow clap*
How do you think your post comes across? Just read it. What did it contribute to the conversation? It only served to add another post to the pile of others here that were only written to make me feel like i'm dumb or something. It's shit like this that makes me not want to post things in general. I'm glad my post has helped a good amount of people, but I'm getting annoyed with posts like this.
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Holy fuck, I've built this PC back in 2017 and have been unknowingly utilizing the stock speed of 2133 MHz in my RAM since forever. Restarted, went into BIOS, turned on XMP, and lo and behold the RAM is at 3000 MHz now! Thanks, OP, for spreading awareness of this!
Just a question, though. Does this affect the lifespan or durability of the RAM in any way? If it becomes more susceptible to damage, I'd rather keep it at stock speed.
Just a question, though. Does this affect the lifespan or durability of the RAM in any way? If it becomes more susceptible to damage, I'd rather keep it at stock speed.
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Nope it's fine. Your ram is now running as intended.
This makes me so happy! Happy to help!
Don't know if you got the answer to this already but most likely artifacting at 144hz is because of the cable you're using. Is it Display Port or HDMI? If it's HDMI then I would give it an almost 90% chance of being the cause.
If you're going to find a HDMI cable do some research about what's available and what will work for what you need because not all cables that are supposed to achieve a certain spec are created equal.
You can check about everything on your PC specs and current configuration with Hwinfo.
Any clue what I should be looking for with regard to HDMI cables?
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It's an HDMI cable. I don't know what type but I know what I'll do next time it happens. I'll hook it up to a different monitor with the same cable and if the issue follows, I'll blame the cable. Thank you!
I'm actually surprised by how much of a difference RAM made for me. I upgraded from a single 16 GB stick of 2133 RAM to two 8 GB sticks at 3200 and my performance in some games, like Cyberpunk, increased significantly. This doesn't matter as much, but I also got a decent boost in my 3DMark scores.
This is in like every build guide on YouTube and your mobo manual. If anyone is at fault is you.
They were called jumpers because they jump out your hand and you spend 20 minutes looking for them on the floor
Yeah, and the "manual" you might get with a motherboard will say stuff like, "This setting turns on or off this setting." Super helpful there Mr. Manual. Thanks a bunch.
DDR memory is double data rate.
So a clockspeed of 1800 MHz is capable of 3600 megatransfers a second.
The confusion arises from people calling things like 3600 MT/s RAM "3600 MHz".
Dual channel is not the same thing as double data rate.
It means that two RAM channels (connections to the CPU) are in use.
Think of it as a two-lane highway vs a single lane.
If your RAM is not installed in the correct slots, it may still be operating in single-channel mode even though two sticks are installed (only using one of the lanes).
Consumer CPUs have two channels, but higher-end CPUs may have a lot more.
That's most likely to be a bad video cable.
If you have a gaming mouse, make sure the polling rate is set to 1000Hz rather than 125Hz.
I didn't know about this beforehand either but it become pretty obvious when I loaded up my bios and saw the memory was clocked at 2133mhz. I wondered whether I got ripped off for a second but then I asked the interwebs for help.
Not sure about Intel but for anyone with a Ryzen, make sure your RAM is properly overclocked to its rated speed. I forgot to do it after updating my bios once and it was pretty noticeable in games. Playing Sekiro in 4K I was getting significant framerate drops below 60, when I overclocked to 3600mhz, the game now stays at a rock solid 60 fps. If it can impact a game like Sekiro, I can only imagine it's even more of an issue in more demanding games.
Not sure about Intel but for anyone with a Ryzen, make sure your RAM is properly overclocked to its rated speed. I forgot to do it after updating my bios once and it was pretty noticeable in games. Playing Sekiro in 4K I was getting significant framerate drops below 60, when I overclocked to 3600mhz, the game now stays at a rock solid 60 fps. If it can impact a game like Sekiro, I can only imagine it's even more of an issue in more demanding games.
I didn't know this either when I bought my 3200mhz ram. Thankfully for some reason the first thing I did was open CPU-Z and check the frequency had gone up, just so I could get that "feeling of upgrade" and then found out it hadn't, which prompted me to do the required research.
At least OP missed the whole controversy where system builders like NZXT were claiming that enabling XMP voided your warranty because it's overclocking.
There was enough blowback from that complete nonsense that they eventually relented.
There was enough blowback from that complete nonsense that they eventually relented.