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
I think when I built my first PC in 2011, I checked the RAM speed and saw that it wasn't running at the "full speed" that I paid for. I googled and found that I needed to enable XMP.
It's also possible I already knew, since I watched about a billion videos before building my first PC.
It's also possible I already knew, since I watched about a billion videos before building my first PC.
I guess could be the case for some people. Thinking it's more a power user type of thing though. If you know how to overclock RAM you know an XMP profile exists.
nah, you don't sympathize. You don't even empathize.
netflix doesn't require to use VPN to have the same experience has the USA/UK users. Just because portuguese netflix has less content doesn't mean it is harder to use than USA netflix. Which was my point. Portuguese netflix is just as easy to use as USA/UK netflix. It works flawlessly here.
Having less content for the same price is NOT the problem i'm talking about.
You also keep not answering any of my points but somehow pretending that consoles are somehow easier to use for everyone.
You are effectively saying that the intended experience for consoles is to only be able to read system UI and the rest doesn't matter for acessebility.
So if you are bullying me by indirectly calling me stupid for not understanding other languages from nearby countries but somehow i'm the bad guy for calling you mean and obtuse?
your quote detailed:
Jsut to be clear here you are saying that i'm not intended to understand games I buy.
Netflix example is flat out wrong. Like i explained netflix doesn't offer movies/series that can't be understood.
Youa re saying consoles are simple to use for someone that can't understand anything on screen VS using a PC that is in Portuguese and somehow clicking 2 simple buttons that appear in most (all?) tutorials and manuals?
You are saying that somehow i'm too stupid for not seeing how easy consoles are to use despite knowing i can't understand/read most of the UI, specially in games VS playing on PC where everything is in either English or Portuguese.
I'm sorry for being a stupid portuguese that thinks that language is a much bigger barrier for ease of use than clicking 2 buttons. Have a good night sir/madam.
It doesn't; i can't remember the reason.
Do you have any other ideas? that was a good one that i ahve tried to use a lot. I also tried to start several missions or attack animations near the wall and ground.
I also haven'0t found a way to kill myself. maybe taht would respawn me outside the building.
Wow thanks OP!!!
I have 32GB Ripjaws DDR4-3200 RAM and my husband built my PC so I asked him and he said my BIOS was set to Auto and should be running at 3200 but lo and behold it was running at 2133 lol.
I've got a Ryzen 7 3800x CPU and it says it supports this RAM speed so I have updated it a d it now says it's running at 3200.
Not sure if/how I will tell a difference but I appreciate the heads up :)
I have 32GB Ripjaws DDR4-3200 RAM and my husband built my PC so I asked him and he said my BIOS was set to Auto and should be running at 3200 but lo and behold it was running at 2133 lol.
I've got a Ryzen 7 3800x CPU and it says it supports this RAM speed so I have updated it a d it now says it's running at 3200.
Not sure if/how I will tell a difference but I appreciate the heads up :)
So I've been unable to get my motherboard/ram to enable XMP.
I have an MSI Gaming Plus B550, and 2x G.Skill Ripjaw V Series 32GB F4-3200C16D-32GVK. Anytime I enable any XMP profile, my computer won't post and I have to go through the steps of resetting the cmos. I'm trying to figure out what to troubleshoot, but I'm not sure what to do. Did I get bad ram or is my motherboard just being weird?
I have an MSI Gaming Plus B550, and 2x G.Skill Ripjaw V Series 32GB F4-3200C16D-32GVK. Anytime I enable any XMP profile, my computer won't post and I have to go through the steps of resetting the cmos. I'm trying to figure out what to troubleshoot, but I'm not sure what to do. Did I get bad ram or is my motherboard just being weird?
First of all, update your BIOS and try again. That's your very first troubleshooting step.
If that fails then you can move on to try other things, such as swapping the modules to the other two slots.
Have you updated to the latest bios? They usually increase RAM compatibility with each update. If it still doesn't work, you probably have to wait for a future update. In the meantime, what usually works is adjusting the RAM timing manually.
Thanks! A bios update did it. I had originally looked at the bios update, but I was only on the previous version and the changelog didn't say anything about ram compatibility so I had (falsely) assumed that it wouldn't make a difference. Now I'm running at a cool 3200.
OP
OP
If you use the XMP profile it should just set it automatically for you. Manually setting RAM frequency, timings, and voltages is a thing of the past. Manufacturers sell their RAM with advertised frequencies and timings, and they program those values into that XMP profile which is read by your BIOS.
You're exaggerating. It's true that a lot of people don't know about it (do more research), but once you find out, it's literally just something you turn on. You don't have to fiddle around with anything. How is that more advanced than changing literally any other setting on your PC?
Not really. The performance gap is large and it helps with 1% lows a lot, I only turned on XMP this year while playing Watch Dogs 3...and I've been playing on PC for over a decade and have built my own PCs. You just expect some of these things to work at the advertised speed as the advertised speeds are usually the minimum stable speed for any product usually. Additionally, if you don't run a lot of performance metrics for monitoring, you won't even know that it's doing that.
Well this thread is fascinating. Glad people are learning how their computers work. Some of you were enjoying a massive performance hit just by not educating yourself on the basics. 😔
Pc gaming is so easy and doesn't need any kind of tinkering at all.
Trying to play PCVR games and no idea if the low performance is due to bad drivers, bad OS, bad hardware or whatever, it's great!
Trying to play PCVR games and no idea if the low performance is due to bad drivers, bad OS, bad hardware or whatever, it's great!
For me, yes. While it can be genuinely frustrating at times, at the end of the day I really do love looking "under the hood" of technology, and seeing how I can potentially optimize it to make it run better/faster.
It's why I loved Window's Mobile phones when they were a thing.. despite them being kind of trash lol.
Get off your high horse pls.
This clearly isn't something that is mentioned often and feels very hidden to most users. It's the default setting for most BIOS.
And even pre-configured Gaming PCs like mine get shipped without this activated properly. Even when the PC is advertised with higher speeds.
Yes, the User experience for PC gaming ist often very shitty compared to consoles. Everyone claiming something else is either very lucky, a tech specialist or just talking bullshit. You just have to look around here in PC topics, there are a lot of problems. BUT if everything works well, PC gaming is much better than consoles. So, there simply isn't a "perfect" platform at the end of the day.
Like many specialised subjects - its easy if you know the answer. Very easy to miss if you don't.
XMP feels like a hangover from config.sys and autoexec.bat days. You really shoudln't need to go into BIOS except for overclocking or fan tuning (even then you can do fans from windows). You buy 3400 ram and the MB supports 3400 ram? Ram should work at 3400 without fiddling with things. I mean you enable XMP it literally picks up all the timings from the ram and sets them. So do that by default?
Not to mention, I tried to reinstall Windows 10 but on a new M2 drive a few days ago. Easy they said, well I'd needed to format my external HDD to create Windows 10 installation kit, find out after error messages that I need to delete partitions on my old m2 drive, and delete the partitions that were created on the new drive before the installation failed. Reformat, delete partitions, UNPLUG all my other storage drives because errors, now I can reinstall Windows 10. Took around 8 hours.
unplug all drives except the one you're installing windows on is another tip I wish everyone knew, but isn't as common knowledge as it should be. You can look in Disk Management and see where Windows has put everything. It's not necessarily poor design, but it does sometimes create multiple points of failure for a Windows install that confuses people.
XMP is overclocking though, and there's no CPU on the market that has support for 3400mhz memory without overclocking the memory controller on your CPU. It's unfortunate but I completely understand why it is disabled by default, because stability and compatibility is not guaranteed and a consumer really needs to opt in if they want to (technically) void their CPU warranty.
There's XMP kits out there that will run on less than a handful of motherboards and only when paired with golden sample CPUs. Enabling XMP by default sounds like a support nightmare for motherboard manufacturers.
I didn't know this for the longest time. It's hardly obvious. No idea why this quite important information is so hidden. It's weird.
The only way you'll ever learn it out of your own volition, is if you boot into BIOS, notice the RAM frequency and reckon it surely ought to be faster than that.
That happened to me like six months ago when I decided that I should check how this fan curve business works. Before that I hadn't entered BIOS since I had upgraded that PC four years prior.
Unless otherwise noted, or somehow intuitively understood, you expect a thing you buy to run at the speed it's rated for, marketed and sold at. You don't have to fiddle with any other component to have it run at its marketed speed. Doesn't even say in asterisked fineprint on the RAM packaging that you have to enable a BIOS setting. It might say in the motherboard manual in section 4 on page 63 how to enable DOCP or whatever different thing XMP might be called instead of XMP for whatever reason, but why would you look up this thing that's never been mentioned before?
The only way you'll ever learn it out of your own volition, is if you boot into BIOS, notice the RAM frequency and reckon it surely ought to be faster than that.
That happened to me like six months ago when I decided that I should check how this fan curve business works. Before that I hadn't entered BIOS since I had upgraded that PC four years prior.
Unless otherwise noted, or somehow intuitively understood, you expect a thing you buy to run at the speed it's rated for, marketed and sold at. You don't have to fiddle with any other component to have it run at its marketed speed. Doesn't even say in asterisked fineprint on the RAM packaging that you have to enable a BIOS setting. It might say in the motherboard manual in section 4 on page 63 how to enable DOCP or whatever different thing XMP might be called instead of XMP for whatever reason, but why would you look up this thing that's never been mentioned before?
How do I check my installed RAM speed? (as opposed to the one actually running, which I checked following the OP)
The speed it is rated for? Label on the side of the stick or googling the model number that software like CPU Z gives you. But turning on xmp/docp/eocp usually sets it to that speed unless they are a special product that goes beyond what the mobo can do.
OMGGGG, thank you OP !! I watched over dozens of tutorials and built my PC over 3 years ago, and I didn't know about this feature !
One thing I don't understand though, if I type this command, it shows me that my RAM now properly works at 2933. But task manger shows that my speed is only
1467 Mhz (It was 1333 before the change). Am I missing something ?
I was messing around the BIOS screem and I couldn't find any option to turn that profile on. Only the option to manually set the RAM speed (which was set to auto but went up to 2600mhz).
That's normal, don't worry. you only miss that DDR means double datarate, so for raw 1467Mhz, effective speed is 2933.
Double data rate - Wikipedia
edit: toasted :P
My motherboard automatically runs the RAM at the highest speed officially supported by the CPU - as most should, if the RAM properly communicates its rated speed.
XMP profiles are often an overclock, and may not be stable.
No CPU officially supports 3400 MT/s RAM, to use your example.
Quoting my earlier post:
- 1467 MHz = 2933 MT/s
- 1333 MHz = 2666 MT/s
Setting IRQs and DMA in config.sys and then wondering why the hell the new modem you just put in is disabling the sound blaster.
Same. This is the first I've heard of this too. I never really checked and just assumed that my RAM was running as it should.
Just checked my BIOS and sure enough, I enabled XMP and the speeds on my memory chips increased.
I built my first PC in 2016 and was lucky enough to hear about this. It was either through a video on YouTube or from the Build A PC thread on the old site. I'm glad that more people are aware now and can run their RAM at the advertised clock speed!
I'm sorry, I have 2666MHz DDR4 RAM that runs that speed at normal 1.2V. Have a 2016 MSI MoBo and just updated my Bios firmware twice before christmas with having to re-enterall settings twice in that week and never had to activate XMP or anything. My RAM gets recognized by the Bios and runs at 2666MHz nothing needs to be set or activated. Just double-checked in TaskMgr and CPU-Z.
Most XMP ram-kits either indicate on the packaging itself have a disclaimer about speeds achieved only on a XMP profile. There is also the motherboard manual that also goes into detail about the RAM slots for placement for Dual Channel configuration as well as needing to go into BIOS to set a XMP profile if necessary.
Now all of this stuff is typically available to you if you bought each part and built the PC yourself. Now if this was an PC builder outlet like Origin, NZXT, or CyberpowerPC, who typically do some factory OC configuration, I'd be surprised for them to overlook the XMP setting since that is typically part of the OC process.
Now if you bought a pre-built from a company like Dell or HP for example, well yeah settings may not be optimal in some cases.
But typically for custom builds all of the hardware you purchased should come with a level of documentation, which if ignored / not read at all, yes I can see how one can overlook the XMP setting for Ram speed in the BIOS.
Now all of this stuff is typically available to you if you bought each part and built the PC yourself. Now if this was an PC builder outlet like Origin, NZXT, or CyberpowerPC, who typically do some factory OC configuration, I'd be surprised for them to overlook the XMP setting since that is typically part of the OC process.
Now if you bought a pre-built from a company like Dell or HP for example, well yeah settings may not be optimal in some cases.
But typically for custom builds all of the hardware you purchased should come with a level of documentation, which if ignored / not read at all, yes I can see how one can overlook the XMP setting for Ram speed in the BIOS.
ok interesting I didn't realise that. In that case perhaps youtube and web articles should be more careful being clear about that as most recommend 3200+ for AMD systems for the best results. Unless its a 'technically overclocking but most MBs will handle it fine' thing in some middle ground?
It's so interesting to hear. I probably never noticed until recently that there are two separate hobbies on this board, which for many overlap but for some people they don't at all: running games and playing games.
When I was keeping my PC up to date I did get a particular satisfaction seeing the numbers go up, but never really enjoyed it enough to last. Console gaming made it just about playing games, which is by far my preference. But I can see how both are enjoyable to different people, and how some must just love getting the set up perfect, and then playing it as well.
Correct slots and ram speed have a pretty noticeable difference with most Ryzen CPUs. The infinity fabric is default tied to your RAM frequencies. Faster your RAM, the faster the CCUs in the chips communicate with each other. And putting them in the correct slots doubles your RAM bandwidth by running in dual channel as opposed to single.
Does the ram slot differ from MB to MB or is it always the same?
I didn't know this when I built my first PC 9 years ago and 2nd a day ago...fixed...but now I need to figure out how to OC it to 3600.
I've had some that certain slots were capable of faster speeds than others. It depends on the motherboard, so check which ones you manual suggests. I seem to recall having seen a board with A¹A²B¹B² as opposed to A¹B¹A²B², but can't remember if it was a special board or not... Best to just check the manual every time. My current motherboard has the A slots rated for 1866mhz max and the B slots rated at 3600mhz max.
Ugh... That wasn't fun, thankfully didn't have to do that for too long.
Windows seems to do it:
(Yeah, I have 800 MHz RAM, this thread makes me go all
It says 3200 when I run the command line, yet I do not remember doing any specific thing, which worries me a bit...
What are the tools to check if the "overclock" is stable?
What are the tools to check if the "overclock" is stable?
That's normal, don't worry. you only miss that DDR means double datarate, so for raw 1467Mhz, effective speed is 2933.
Double data rate - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
edit: toasted :P
Thank you both for the info ! :)
Always check your motherboard manual when building a new pc. Pretty much any question I had was answered through that.
Xmp does feel outdated though, like this stuff should work out of the box without having to turn it on through bios
Xmp does feel outdated though, like this stuff should work out of the box without having to turn it on through bios
Most motherboards I've used have different modes and will default to compatibility or stability. XMP profiles can be unstable, especially with newer chipsets, they often ship motherboards with betas and 1.0 isn't released until months later. I still have 32 GB/64 GB installed on my year old rig because my RAM isn't stable with 4 DIMMs. Need to check that out.
IIRC, AMD ryzen benefits a lot more from higher clocked ram.
IIRC, AMD ryzen benefits a lot more from higher clocked ram.