RAM speed report (HWINFO)

[Tophiate]

hey guys I apologize if this is already being discussed somewhere: I have 2 DIMMS of DDR4-3200 / PC4-25600 DDR4 SDRAM UDIMM installed on my motherboard (ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI)). Currently on HWINFO as well as Speccy and HWmonitor the listing the Clock Speed at 1066.7 MHz. I had thought it was 3200 Mhz speed. I just read a bit about going into BIOS and changing the "XMP/DOCP" profile, as well as the nature of base clock speed vs actual and what DDR actually is. I understood about 57% of what I was reading.

Every system I build I always feel like it is a minor miracle they run we well as they do...I am a hobbyist at best but everyone wants me to build for them. My nephew turned this system on 5 years ago and I am not sure he ever turned it off. I am not bragging I am giving context to why I am concerned about going into his BIOS and monkeying with switches when the PC is only experiencing some slow downs...

I am also CLEANING his rig, its gross and both his HDD's and SSD are packed...so we have variables at play.

I was planning on replacing his RAM (see above) with 32GB of Crucial RAM with the same specifications as well as swapping out his rx580 with a 5700XT to try and get his rig to play "Wukong"...

My concern at this point is not breaking his rig he uses so much. If the RAM isn't set up correctly then god knows what else I need to fix before upgrading.

Any information on how this RAM issue is resolved (if it is an issue) I would appreciate..not to mention if anyone has 2 cents on the GPU plan, I don't want to just pull components out if its a lateral move.

Thanks!

 

[Dalai]

It's pretty easy to understand, but I admit that it's not as easy (especially for beginners) to dig through the contradicting pieces of information around the web about memory speeds.

See these posts:
https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/hwinfo-shows-half-ram-speed.6042/post-22913
https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/threads/memory-information-contradiction-why.6324/post-24396

A couple of years ago someone asked me via direct message. It pretty much covers the basics, so I'm quoting an excerpt of my answer here:

There's a general misconception that the number at the end of the DDR memory specification, e.g. DDR4-3200, is the frequency it's running at. The number specifies the transfer rate in Mbps (megabits per second). The frequency is half that number, in the case of DDR4-3200 it's 1600 MHz.

Buildzoid recently made an interesting video about the units used by the various parties involved:

Also keep the following in mind:

• DDR memory can transfer data (up to) twice per clock cycle, hence the name Double Data Rate
• DDR4 has a base speed of DDR4-2133 or DDR4-2400 (1066 or 1200 MHz respectively), defined by the JEDEC. Frequencies above that are technically overclocking, including everything XMP does. That doesn't mean the memory won't run at these higher speeds or that it will degrade faster, but it's not something approved by the JEDEC.

 

[Zach]

hey guys I apologize if this is already being discussed somewhere: I have 2 DIMMS of DDR4-3200 / PC4-25600 DDR4 SDRAM UDIMM installed on my motherboard (ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI)). Currently on HWINFO as well as Speccy and HWmonitor the listing the Clock Speed at 1066.7 MHz. I had thought it was 3200 Mhz speed. I just read a bit about going into BIOS and changing the "XMP/DOCP" profile, as well as the nature of base clock speed vs actual and what DDR actually is. I understood about 57% of what I was reading.

Every system I build I always feel like it is a minor miracle they run we well as they do...I am a hobbyist at best but everyone wants me to build for them. My nephew turned this system on 5 years ago and I am not sure he ever turned it off. I am not bragging I am giving context to why I am concerned about going into his BIOS and monkeying with switches when the PC is only experiencing some slow downs...

I am also CLEANING his rig, its gross and both his HDD's and SSD are packed...so we have variables at play.

I was planning on replacing his RAM (see above) with 32GB of Crucial RAM with the same specifications as well as swapping out his rx580 with a 5700XT to try and get his rig to play "Wukong"...

My concern at this point is not breaking his rig he uses so much. If the RAM isn't set up correctly then god knows what else I need to fix before upgrading.

Any information on how this RAM issue is resolved (if it is an issue) I would appreciate..not to mention if anyone has 2 cents on the GPU plan, I don't want to just pull components out if its a lateral move.

Thanks!

Like @Dalai said the DDR4 3200 is not running at 3200MHz but at 1600MHz. The 3200 is the effective speed since DDR means double data rate.
So the correct way to say it is that DDR4 3200 is a 3200MT/s (MegaTransfers/s).
Now you see 1066MHz becaue you DRAM runs at 2133MT/s instead of 3200MT/s, meaning it runs on the JEDEC profile and not the XMP/DOCP profile which those are the advertised ones.


This is an example of DDR5 6800
It has multiple JEDEC profiles and 1 XMP profile.
For DDR5 6800 the XMP profile needs to be enabled in BIOS and then RAM can run at 3400MHz (6800MT/s = 6800MHz effective speed)
All boards by default run the JEDEC profile. The XMP profile is considered the OverClocked (OC) one so automatically they enable a JEDEC one.

If you get GPU-Z you will see it on the SPD tab like below