One of the new features ported to the B560 chipset is support for RAM overclocking. B460 systems were limited to DDR4-2666 or DDR4-2933 depending on the processor. B560 aims to change all that by allowing to overclock RAM and improve gaming performance.
RAM overclocking, however, can be a complicated topic for many people. Many factors have to be considered when overclocking such as RAM voltage, CPU IO2 voltage, CPU SA voltage, and timings. It’s quite a challenge for users who don’t have much experience in overclocking.
Fortunately, Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) provides an easy way to overclock RAM. It enables users to overclock RAM by selecting profiles optimized by RAM manufacturers instead of adjust the parameters in the BIOS.
In addition to Intel XMP, MSI’s “Memory Try It!” feature offers more support for overclocking with more than 100 OC profiles to push RAM further than XMP can. Here’s how you can easily overclock your RAM with XMP and “Memory Try It” with MSI B560 motherboards to improve performance.
XMP can be enabled by clicking on the XMP button in BIOS.
After entering BIOS, there is an XMP Profile button at the top-left side of the screen. Two XMP profiles will be displayed if your kit supports two XMP profiles and so on. Click on the XMP Profile button to load XMP or load XMP from the “Extreme Memory Profile” dropdown menu. Save and exit BIOS to apply the settings.
RAM Bandwidth scales with RAM frequency.
MSI has tested the performance of several XMP modules with AIDA64 Memory Benchmark. RAM bandwidth scales with RAM frequency so RAM bandwidth increases as frequency goes higher.
Latency, however, does not always scale with frequency. The latency is higher with DDR4-4000 than DDR4-3600. This is because DDR4-4000 is running in Gear 2 Mode, with the Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) clock at half the speed of the memory clock.
Latency is reduced to 52.4ns with DDR4-3600.
Forza Horizon 4 – FPS is increased with higher RAM frequency.
Watch Dogs: Legion – FPS is increased with higher RAM frequency.
GTA – FPS is increased with higher RAM frequency.
RAM overclocking is helpful to gaming performance as well. DDR4-3600 looks like the sweet spot for gaming. It is around 8 to 25% faster than DDR4-2133 and a bit faster than DDR4-4000. Performance will still vary depending on the game.
If XMP performance isn’t enough, you can push your RAM further with Memory Try It!. MSI’s Memory Try It! Offers more than 100 overclocking profiles for popular RAM chips such as Samsung, Hynix, Micron, etc.
RAM can now be overclocked with higher frequencies and tighter timings than using XMP by just selecting a profile and testing if your system is stable. If you manage to deem it stable, you can them push higher and faster profiles until you find the maximum stable overclock.
You can use Memory Try It! to push your RAM further.
You can adjust the parameters manually based on the Memory Try It! profiles.
Memory Try It! offers optimized overclocking profiles for your RAM.
You can also adjust specific parameters to achieve better performance based on the Memory Try It! Profiles. Take the ADATA DDR4-3200 kit from MSI, they found out that it was stable at DDR4-3600 CL16-20-20-38 but can be pushed to DDR4-3600 CL14-16-16-28. This reduces latency from 55ns to 47.7ns for an extra 2 – 5% fps compared to its vanilla XMP profile.
DDR4-3600 CL14-16-16-28 has lower latency than XMP DDR4-3600 CL17-21-21-39.
Forza Horizon 4 – You can get more FPS with Memory Try It! profiles.
With DDR4-3600 CL14-16-16-28, you will get an extra 5% FPS compared to DDR4-3200 XMP.
GTA 5 – You can try to get extra FPS with Memory Try It! profiles.
From MSI’s results, RAM speeds can affect games. RAM overclocking makes B560 motherboards a bargain for gaming systems. If you have XMP modules, don’t hesitate to overclock your RAM with XMP. If you want more FPS, try MSI’s Memory Try It!
Test bench used for RAM overclocking in this article.
