AMD Ryzen DDR4 overclocking gaming performance: timings vs frequency

As we know, the AMD Ryzen platform's memory compatibility and overclocking support has improved quite a bit since the early March 2017 launch date. Lots of motherboard makers have issued new BIOS versions that incorporate AMD's AGESA 1.0.0.6 microcode updates. This prompted AMD marketing guy Robert Hallock to write another blog post about the impact of frequency and memory timings on Ryzen's gaming performance. You can check out his work over here.

Here are his biggest conclusions:

Conclusion #1: Dual rank DIMMs (yellow) offered the best performance amongst “set and forget” (light blue, orange, yellow) memory configured automatically by XMP profiles.

Conclusion #1a: But the increased overclocking headroom of single rank modules was more than enough to overpower the benefits of rank interleaving, so manually-tuned single rank DDR4-3200 and 3466 won the day (dark blue and green).

Conclusion #2: BankGroupSwap should likely be disabled for users that want the best PC gaming performance. As always, test your specific use case.

Conclusion #3: Chasing the highest possible clockspeed required timings so relaxed that real world performance suffered versus lower frequencies with tighter timings. This is a fine balance, however, so testing on your platform is always helpful.

Conclusion #4: Geardown Mode should likely be disabled if your overclock is stable with a 1T command rate. As always, test your specific use case.