-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
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
Oh. Good job Microsoft.Windows seems to do it:
(Yeah, I have 800 MHz RAM, this thread makes me go all)
2666MHz is the JEDEC standard speed for current Intel CPUs. Higher is when you need OC with XMP.
I had no idea about this either, but then again I'm pretty sure my RAM isn't above 2133, so I guess it wasn't as applicable back when I last upgraded.
I think it was about 5 years ago I last got new RAM.
I think it was about 5 years ago I last got new RAM.
I don't know what's going on or if it made a difference.
I have had DDR3 2400 MHz(?) RAM for 6-7 years. I never knew about this.
Without enabling XMP, I did the command in the OP and it showed 2400. That is with Auto (Asus Z87 Pro mobo). But I looked at the Task Manager and it said 1333...
With XMP it says 2400 in the task manager and still 2400 when using the command in the OP.
Someone said DDR is double data rate so you double the 1333 in the task manager....but that can't be right as my RAM only goes to 2400, not 2666. And I don't have 4800 MHz ram now.
And it said 2400 (not the supposed max of 2133) in the command line without XMP.
The only thing that changed after enabling XMP is the task manager showing 1333 to 2400.
Perhaps it's to do with DDR3 vs 4 or because of my motherboard automatically tuning things.
I have had DDR3 2400 MHz(?) RAM for 6-7 years. I never knew about this.
Without enabling XMP, I did the command in the OP and it showed 2400. That is with Auto (Asus Z87 Pro mobo). But I looked at the Task Manager and it said 1333...
With XMP it says 2400 in the task manager and still 2400 when using the command in the OP.
Someone said DDR is double data rate so you double the 1333 in the task manager....but that can't be right as my RAM only goes to 2400, not 2666. And I don't have 4800 MHz ram now.
And it said 2400 (not the supposed max of 2133) in the command line without XMP.
The only thing that changed after enabling XMP is the task manager showing 1333 to 2400.
Perhaps it's to do with DDR3 vs 4 or because of my motherboard automatically tuning things.
Last edited:
Thanks OP. I've just built my first computer and my 3600MHz was running at 2133. As someone mentioned on my ASUS motherboard it was DOCP and not XMP.
its hard to find really good ones. You need hdmi 2.0 for 1440p and 144hz but not all cables are created equal. Find the cable you're looking at and google search that name and brand and see if there are any issues with the resolution and refresh rate you want to use it at.
If the monitor you're using has display port I would suggest using that it's much more reliable. But you should still make sure you're getting the right type of display port cable for your needs because a lot of these high end things are so new it's not really common for cables to be created to the precise and very high end standard they need.
There is a lot of discussion on various forums of LG OLED owners having trouble finding hdmi 2.1 cables that fan actually handle the full hdmi 2.1 spec. If you need more help I'd be happy to help via pm but I don't check re every day so I could be a bit slow responding.
Yeah, I did this for a while, but the RAM in question wasn't that much faster anyway. When I upgraded more recently to 3200MHz RAM, I knew to turn it up.
And to people saying "read the manuals", all the manuals say about XMP is "Use this option to enable XMP". Not a one of the manuals I've got says anything about what XMP is actually used for.
And to people saying "read the manuals", all the manuals say about XMP is "Use this option to enable XMP". Not a one of the manuals I've got says anything about what XMP is actually used for.
Ok, but why is other peoples' RAM stuck at 2133MHz and not at 2666Mhz before they activate XMP?? Are they not JEDEC compliant in other ways and 2133MHz is the lowest common denominator that all DDR4 RAM has to work at with certain standard values of voltage and timings?
I've build PC's my entire life, even went to school for it for 2 years (though in like 2004 or something) and I had no idea. Just went from 2133MHz to 3600MHz
Does this break warrenty on things btw? I'm on an AMD Processor/Motherboard this time and when I open up Ryzen Master it warns about overclocking breaking warrenty I believe. Dunno if that counts for this though.
Does this break warrenty on things btw? I'm on an AMD Processor/Motherboard this time and when I open up Ryzen Master it warns about overclocking breaking warrenty I believe. Dunno if that counts for this though.
XMP is overclocking, so technically it can void your warranty. However, the CPU manufacturer can't find out if you've enabled it unless you actually tell them yourself.
It's most likely to be older CPUs, or memory kits which do not report the correct speed.
For example: reporting as a 2133 MT/s DIMM, but with a 3200 MT/s XMP profile, rather than reporting as a 3200 MT/s DIMM with the XMP profile being there for CPUs which can only reach those speeds via overclocking - or to ensure the correct (faster) timings are being used.
Wow. I've had my pc build since like 2016 or 2017 and I've never done this until now. I wish I could say I saw a huge difference but my GTX 670 is holding me back more than anything else.
There's like two or three settings a user should change in BIOS when launching the PC for the first time and one of them is make sure that the RAM kit you've bought actually runs at the speed you were aiming at. I'm assuming that people do pay attention to speeds of RAM they are getting?
I learned this within a week of building my PC since I would check my PC specs and notice the ram not reading what it should've. Thats when I found out through YouTube what to do.
At least you didn't run a 144 hz Monitor at 60 hz for over a year...
At least you didn't run a 144 hz Monitor at 60 hz for over a year...
The fact that so many people in this thread didn't know about XMP is pretty eye-opening. I assumed it was common knowledge, but I guess I was wrong! Given that Era is an enthusiast forum it seems likely that a non-insignificant percentage of PCs out there don't have it enabled. Surely pre-builts set it up correctly?
Ryzen Master can absolutely do warranty voiding hardware damage if you put too much voltage in parts, so putting a big warning on startup in makes sense
Imagine if it was a kickass PC to go along with that, all those frames wasted.
This thread made me realize that my memory was running at 2133 MHz despite the fact that it supports 3200 MHz, and I've had my PC for more than two years. I almost bricked the damn thing when updating it, but a Clear CMOS saved me, and now it is indeed running at full speed. So yeah, thanks :)
I knew about this and thought I had fixed it, but this thread made me go double check and sure enough my RAM that was supposed to be running at 3000 was back down to 2133 or whatever, so booted into bios (ASRock bios hides the option kinda well) and manually set the RAM speed to match what was advertised and am now getting the correct result on the console command and task manager.
Doubt there will be a massive performance increase, but definitely feel better knowing I'm taking advantage of what I paid for.
Doubt there will be a massive performance increase, but definitely feel better knowing I'm taking advantage of what I paid for.
So I checked mine out and it turned out it was running right despite not having a clue about this setting. This likely means at some point I did turn it on after a bios update but its the kind of thing I'm going to do once after reading a guide and then completely forget about its existance.
This thread was informative to me. I wouldn't call myself a PC expert, but I remember way back when I got my first Pentium II, my computer guy was setting it up and he told me that you always have to go into the BIOS and check (and maybe change) the RAM speed and timings, because you never know what the motherboard is going to set things to. And the numbers you want to see in the BIOS are the ones written right there on the side of the RAM.
I did build my own computer once where I set the RAM speed and timings manually. It was complicated, but I read the motherboard instructions and did it properly (I also seated the RAM in the correct slots, which was nowhere near intuitive, and remains a potential problem when building your own PC).
Nowadays, XMP simplified the process immensely. You don't need to read/enter any numbers, you just "switch on XMP" and the RAM automatically tells the motherboard what settings it wants. I'm surprised to see this as a new hurdle for some people, when it was the elimination of a hurdle for me. But then, my old Pentium II computer guy was pretty awesome, so I guess I unknowingly came at it from a more advanced perspective than some others.
But then, even knowing more than average, I still learned something new, because with XMP the RAM demands as much from the motherboard as the RAM is designed to handle, and apparently that can sometimes be more than your MOBO/CPU is able to provide. So maybe turning on XMP isn't always the smartest idea.
So, thank you, thread.
I did build my own computer once where I set the RAM speed and timings manually. It was complicated, but I read the motherboard instructions and did it properly (I also seated the RAM in the correct slots, which was nowhere near intuitive, and remains a potential problem when building your own PC).
Nowadays, XMP simplified the process immensely. You don't need to read/enter any numbers, you just "switch on XMP" and the RAM automatically tells the motherboard what settings it wants. I'm surprised to see this as a new hurdle for some people, when it was the elimination of a hurdle for me. But then, my old Pentium II computer guy was pretty awesome, so I guess I unknowingly came at it from a more advanced perspective than some others.
But then, even knowing more than average, I still learned something new, because with XMP the RAM demands as much from the motherboard as the RAM is designed to handle, and apparently that can sometimes be more than your MOBO/CPU is able to provide. So maybe turning on XMP isn't always the smartest idea.
So, thank you, thread.
Oh it gets better there. If your RAM can't run at its top rated speed, you can still tighten up the timings to get better performance. Ryzen really benefits from this.
Did you upgrade the size or speed of your RAM (or both)?
RAM mostly determines the number of things you can do at the same time. 4gb is basically what you need to run Windows 10 by itself (in a barely-functional but technically still functional state, so you can use the internet and check email), 8gb is the comfortable minimum most people should probably have, and can do some gaming (not cutting edge). 16gb is obviously better than 8gb. Plenty of modern PCs have 32gb, because why not. If you don't have enough RAM, Windows will sort of juggle the available RAM between all the programs that need it (dividing the effective RAM speed by how much over your RAM limit you're going), or it might use the HDD/SSD as virtual RAM, both of which are pretty bad for performance, so you should generally have more RAM than you need, so that it never does that. If it does that, you might not even notice the performance loss unless you're measuring your performance somehow, because your naked eye is no good at judging milliseconds.
If you did an upgrade for speed, you probably won't notice. If your XMP is turned off, you probably won't notice. The difference is there, it's just hard to see it.
If you added some fast RAM to increase the size of your basic RAM pool, the new fast RAM will underclock and slow down to match speeds with the slowest RAM in your system (if you try to turn the speed up, your slow RAM won't be able to keep up, and it'll become unstable and crash the PC). In which case all you'll see by adding the fast new RAM is a boost in the size of your installed RAM, not any sort of boost in the speed of your RAM. An army can only march as fast as it's slowest soldier.
A RAM upgrade is nowhere near as noticeable as something like the upgrade from HDDs to SSDs was.
If you press control-shift-escape (used to be control-alt-delete), you'll bring up the Task Manager. Click on the Performance tab and it'll show you how much RAM you've got, what percentage of your memory is in use, and what speed the RAM is.
I learned how to build PCs 15 years ago when this wasn't a thing so of course I'm not going to go watch videos about building PCs. Come on now.
I only learned about XMP because the RAM i bought was causing a blue screen in my laptop. Someone on a forum suggested enabling XMP. I researched what that was and decided it should be on anyway, blue screen or not. Lo and behold, it not only fixed my bsod but also runs the RAM at 3200. Had the RAM worked from the first installation i probably wouldn't have learned about it until this thread.
I only learned about XMP because the RAM i bought was causing a blue screen in my laptop. Someone on a forum suggested enabling XMP. I researched what that was and decided it should be on anyway, blue screen or not. Lo and behold, it not only fixed my bsod but also runs the RAM at 3200. Had the RAM worked from the first installation i probably wouldn't have learned about it until this thread.
Hang on, you have to do what now???
I just upgraded my ram, first I've ever heard of this
Edit: just checked Task Manager, it says my Memory Speed is 2133 MHz.... how do I do this Bios change??
I just upgraded my ram, first I've ever heard of this
Edit: just checked Task Manager, it says my Memory Speed is 2133 MHz.... how do I do this Bios change??
I've watched them from like, all the guys who everyone is going to watch. Idk.
To be fair, how many of them covered what you should do AFTER the build? I think these are the ones I'm thinking of, not just straight-up build videos.
That's...my point. That's not the vast majority of them.
If you look up "how to build a PC" you are not going to find a video that mentions things you should do in your bios. Just in general.
Reboot your computer and spam the Escape and/or Delete buttons quickly before Windows has a chance to load anything. That should bring you to your motherboard's BIOS menu. Somewhere in there (depends on the mobo manufacturer) you should find some advanced settings that can let you increase the speed of your RAM, or turn on XMP (which will increase the RAM speed to the RAM's maximum). Although you should be careful with that, because apparently doing this overclocks the memory controller in the CPU, and overclocking is always "at your own risk". It might make your computer unstable until you lower the speed of the RAM, or worst case scenario, it might blow up your CPU. The RAM's max speed is the RAM's max speed, and not an indicator of what your computer can handle.
Yeah, most videos I've seen just assemble the PC parts like expensive Lego. I can't remember the last time I've ever seen anyone go as far as to show how to install an operating system. Like, I've literally never seen anyone install Windows 10. I don't think I even saw anyone show how to install Windows 7. I might've seen it for Windows XP.
This is why I also recommend Paul's Hardware Build a PC series.
He covers the process from building your PC all the way to finalizing some stuff after windows is installed.
He covers the process from building your PC all the way to finalizing some stuff after windows is installed.
Which is my point. They said "watch any" PC builder guide. And like, ehhh no? Vast majority aren't that way.
Yeah this video is great. If you want to build a computer, watch it.