Memory Scaling on Ryzen 7 with Team Group's Night Hawk RGB
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on September 27, 2017 11:05 AM ESTConclusions on Ryzen DDR4 Scaling
It is pretty clear to see that Ryzen can be fairly dependant on memory frequency, but it depends very much on the sort of test and the nature of the workload on memory accesses. On the benchmarks where it matters, our memory kit was above to push performance up and over 20%, although despite the few benchmarks where this happened, it was outnumbered by benchmarks that had zero or a very minor effect. Some gaming titles had up to a 5-10% difference in average frame rates, but others had zero change.
To Infinity and Beyond
Determing the sweet spot for Ryzen from our small batch of testing is not so straightforward. From our quick testing, it would seem to suggest that there are performance gains to be had, with slow progress as the data rate increases. A few benchmarks seemed to hit the performance inflextion point around the DDR4-2933/3066 boundary - or basically where the Team Group Night Hawk RGB DDR4-3000 memory kit is positioned.
Aside from the fact of having fasting memory, the speed directly adjusts the potential in AMD’s Infinity Fabric. The IF is AMD's new scalable interconnect found in the Zen CPUs, Vega GPUs, and likely the next few generations of products. Infinity Fabric connects and manages the data flow from each of the cores to each other, as well as to the additional controllers on board. But the effect of faster DRAM and faster IF, on paper, should be a mutually beneficial improvement, and one would take a reasonable guess that AMD will aim to increase both as new generations of products come to market.
Final Thoughts
Depending on how the results are digested, and how the software can effectively use the new AMD Zen microarchitecture, a relatively decent set of DDR4-3000 (or there abouts) memory seems to be a good inflection point for users that want to invest in faster memory. Obviously using tighter sub-timimgs should help as well, which we'll likely explore in a separate review.
The Team Group Night Hawk RGB memory has served our testing needs well out of the box and it seems like a very reasonable purchase for Ryzen users looking to add a high-performance memory kit. Unfortunately there is no guarantee in the quality of the ICs on board, with Team Group stating that the type of ICs could change over the life time of the product - this will mean that the overclocking capabilities may change depending on the ICs. The memory kit we used in this testing is currently available from Newegg for $173 with a white heatspreader, or $156 with a black heatspreader. Interestingly the black version running at a faster DDR4-3200 is listed at a cheaper $164, but is currently out of stock.
DRAM Price Comparison: 2x8GB DDR4-3000 with RGB (9/27) | ||
Black Headspreader | White Heatspreader | |
Team Group Night Hawk RGB |
$156 (Newegg) CL16-18-18 |
$173 (Newegg) CL16-18-18 |
Corsair Vengeance RGB |
$160 (Amazon) CL15-17-17 |
$180 (Newegg) CL15-17-17 |
G.Skill Trident Z RGB |
$186 (Newegg) CL15-16-16 |
|
GeIL Super Luce RGB |
- | $160 (Newegg) CL16-18-18 |
ADATA XPG Spectrix RGB |
$180 (Amazon) CL16-18-18 |
- |
For other RGB-based kits running 2x8 GB at DDR4-3000 with white heatsinks, Corsair's Vengeance RGB are $180 in white or $160 in black, with GeIL's Super Luce in black also at $160. By comparison, ADATA and G.Skill offer similar kits but in black, both at the $180 price point.
Testing and Analysis by Gavin Bonshor
Additional Commentary by Ian Cutress
65 Comments
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Threska - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
That could potentially be VERY interesting since GPUs are one of the few things that need a high bandwidth.Thefinaleofseem - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Pity that latency wasn't tested as well as clocks. It would be interesting to see how Ryzen scales with both factors.germz1986 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
I would really like to see a review of this G.Skill kit F4-3200C14D-16GFX, It seems it was the first ryzen optimized set for 3200 @ fairly low timings out of the box.kpb321 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Small nitpickDDR4-2933 16-18-18 (Nearest to memory kit rating)
DDR4-3066 16-18-18
DDR4-3066 is actually closer to the memories kits rated 3000 speed. 2933 is the max speed supported by the processor that is below the rated speed of the kit. 3066 would be a slight overclock.
Gavin Bonshor - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
It probably needs re-wording as 2933MHz CL16 is what the XMP profile runs at on Ryzen with this particular kit.nismotigerwvu - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Perhaps he was going by "The Price Is Right" rules :)Dr. Swag - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
You guys should've lowered timings along with frequency to keep latency constant while increasing bandwidth/IF clock speedskpb321 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Those ashes results are interesting. They are the only one that doesn't show a fairly straight forward improvement as memory speed increases. For the tested kit you'd actually get better performance dropping speed down to DDR4 2800 instead of DDR4 2933. Same thing if you are OCs the memory 3200 is faster than 3333.Overall this makes me happy that I decided to spend an extra buck or two when I put together my Ryzen system to grab a 3000 kit which happened to be from Team Group also over the typical 2400/2666 kits around the same price. I hadn't typically seen the value in paying a premium for faster memory kits but the even the early indications showed it was more important for Ryzen systems and this shows how important it can be.
DanNeely - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
That result makes me suspect the dominant effect we're seeing is something random not memory related.SpartanJet - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Really disappointing results, all people talked about is how Ryzen scalled with memory. I guess I'm going with Intel 8700k after all.