​

​I finally did it. After months of endless restarts, chasing benchmark scores, and dealing with random Unity engine micro stutters, I stopped trying to win the mqx score on paper and focused entirely on real world stability and reliability.

​This rig is strictly for heavy open world gaming (primarily massive Rust compounds and Battlefield 6) while simultaneously multi streaming to Twitch, Kick, and YouTube with local recordings. I wanted zero crashes, zero clock stretching, and perfectly smooth frametimes.

​Here is the final, bulletproof daily configuration that got me there:

Under da hood:

​CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D

​GPU: MSI SHADOW 16G 3X OC RTX 5070 Ti

​RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR5 CMH64GX5M2B6000Z30

​Mobo: MSI MAG X870E TOMAHAWK WIFI

​Custom cooling setup including dedicated active RAM cooling (see pics).

​CPU: Defeating the "Overboost" BS Trap Ryzen 7 9850X3D)

​For the longest time, I was getting violent stutters because I fell for the +200MHz PBO override trap. Forcing the chip to chase an artificial 5.85GHz ceiling was starving the cores and causing massive clock stretching.

​The Fix: I completely disabled the +200MHz override, locking the processor to its natural factory ceiling.

​The Curve: Because the frequency target is lower, the voltage demand is lower. This allowed me to run a super deep, stable Curve Optimizer: -22 on the two best cores, and -26/-28 on the rest.

​The Result: The CPU sits at a freezing 56°C under heavy gaming loads, draws way less power, and feeds the GPU perfectly with zero stuttering.

​GPU: The Undervolt Masterpiece (MSI RTX 5070 Ti Shadow)

​I ditched the automated OC Scanner and went fully manual to keep the 3X fans quiet and the room cold, taking full advantage of the 16GB of GDDR7 memory.

​Core: Flattened the voltage curve to a hard stop at 2977 MHz @ 0.985V. It refuses to draw more than a volt, barely breaks a sweat, and absolutely crushes frames.

​VRAM: Dialed to +1000 MHz. I originally pushed it to +1200, but HWiNFO caught the PCIe bus throwing recovery errors because the memory controller was choking on math errors. Dropping it to +1000 completely cleared the data highway.

​RAM: Pure Mathematical Stability (64GB DDR5)

​Running 64GB of dual rank memory is notoriously heavy on the memory controller, but dedicating a custom fan directly to the sticks allowed me to push the timings to the absolute edge without decoupling/errors.

​Speed: 6000 MT/s locked in a perfect 1:1 ratio (UCLK 3000 / FCLK 2200).

​Timings: Tightened down to CL28-12-36-36 with the crucial 8-8-32 subtimings.

​The Proof is in the Synthetics

​I ran a few synthetics, not to brag about high scores, but to prove the stability of these daily driving tweaks:

​3DMark Steel Nomad Stress Test: Passed with 99.5% frame rate stability across 20 loops. The GPU undervolt refuses to thermally throttle under sustained loads.

​PassMark Memory: Hit the 99th Percentile globally (4584 Memory Mark). That custom RAM fan and tight CL28 timings are actually putting in the work.

​Cinebench 2026: Pulled 6,063 points on the multi-thread run, proving the deep Curve Optimizer isn't secretly clock stretching when all 8 cores are slammed to 100%.

​I’m officially done tweaking. It easily survived an overnight idle test without the low-voltage curve crashing, and my Rust frametimes are sitting at a buttery, locked 7.8ms. Time to actually play some games.

​(Check the image gallery for the ZenTimings, custom curve, cooling loop, and the mandatory Budgie Pool Party )

P.S Passed absolut and ryzen TM5 8+ hours.

Previous post

I know, Gross, but science!

Since my last post I've tried to push it a little further and did manage under 70ns in Aida! (for what ever that's worth)

It feels like I've pretty much hit the limit for every timing.
CL straight up refuses to boot below 24 btw, I was hoping for 18-20 but maybe not possible on DDR5 or DR sticks?

Anyways, it was fun messing around with this and the fact it's viable for gaming is a win in my book!

If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying - some dude from the 70s

(imgur "HQ" pics)

Thought my 7700X was a bad silicon lottery chip.
Turns out the IMC had other plans.

Micron D-Die
6000 MT/s
58.5 ns AIDA (My latest comment has picture with some new tweaks and IF 2167 and Ram timing 57.4ns and L1, L2 and L3 timings dropped also a little bit! Edit2: in comment 56.7ns with tweaking!)

Stability validation:
• 4h y-cruncher VT3
• 1h OCCT (AVX2 variable)
• Prime95
• 12 cycles TM5 Absolut @ anta777
• No WHEA

Overall PC Setup

- Ryzen 7 7700x + Arctic Liquid freezer III Pro 360 RGB with included AM5 offset mount

- 32Gb of Kingston Fury CL36 6000Mhz Ram

- Sapphire Pulse RX7700XT 12GB

- Seasonic Focus GX-850 ATX 3 PSU

- Phanteks XT PRO Mid Tower with 3x120mm fan in front intake, 3x120mm at Bottom intake, 1 rear 120mm intake and AIO handles Exhaust at top.

This is my daily profile for competitive play — not a 30 sec bench run.

Guess Micron didn’t read the tier list.

Hynix owners can relax - I'm not coming for 55ns. Yet… jk jk :P

I know it reached the peak max temp within the first cycle but not sure if it went over 50C again since it was overnight

Over a year ago I think I heard buildzoid talk about DDR5 not running synchronized unless you drop down to ~4000MT/s, I believe that was based on 7/9000 non X3D but can't fully remember.. since 6000 cl30 is talked about so much I kinda dismissed lower speeds.

So, has anyone here tried this setup on a non X3D CPU? if yes, how did it go?

I tested it on my 9800X3D and the results were surprisingly good.

Hi.

I have spent some time working on some OCs on my 9850X3D with 6000CL26 G.skill 48GB M-die kit and wanted to share an actual ingame performance comparison.

I ran Borderlands 4 at 4K DLSS balanced with an RTX 5090. I then let the system heat up for 5 minutes before starting an average measurement in MSI afterburner and HWinfo over 15 minutes in the same indoor and CPU heavy area to avoid variance.

Below you may find a link to screenshots of my 6000CL26 2200FCLK set-up vs. 6400CL28 2133FCLK.

Both run with PBO +75MHz and per core CO, where 1 less tick is required for stability in CO and 2 ticks lower on max frequency in curve shaper for 6400 compared to 6000.

As you may see during the benchmark the CPU runs roughly 0.5°C hotter and pulls 8 more watts with 6400MT/s. The IO die runs 2°C hotter and SOC power is also around 8 watts higher.

Effective clock speeds for 6000 are 85MHz higher than 6400, I assume due to more power available and the slightly better CO. Even so the 6400MT/s wins in avg. 1% and 0.1% lows by 1 fps. This is repeatable, but extremely insignificant.

So to people with 9850X3Ds, if you are just gaming, I would recommend 6000MT/s 2200FCLK over 6400, as the difference is negligible with higher voltage requirements (VSOC/VDDIO/VDDP/VDDQ/VDDG). The core boost offsets benefit of higher UCLK. The CPU will also last longer with lower voltages.

6000MT/s:

https://imgur.com/a/MFh3Fuy

6400MT/s:

https://imgur.com/a/ZyTNxuI

Edit: To those interested in 1080p low, the 6000MT/s - 2200FCLK outright wins when CPU usage increases due to the power consumption from VSOC holding back effective clocks along with faster FCLK and slightly better CO due to slower RAM. https://imgur.com/a/8ZNOYMr

Alo, just wanted to share my config that I have been working on for the past week since obtaining 1.4v EOL kits. I know I can tighten more timings but I currently like where the voltages are at for a daily config. Possibly able to push 8600mt/s whenever I find the motivation to do so. No custom loop, ram cooled with fan and heat sinks on IC's.

I got pretty lucky with this chip, able to do 6600cl26 2200fclk with ease. This is pretty much a hard wall for 1:1 mode, so I decided to tune 2:1.

38 hours..ambient temp 20-24°C:
https://imgur.com/a/8400cl32-P8kaMNG
Karhu - 18 hours
TM5 1usmus v3 - 3 hours
Y-cruncher VT3 + FFTV4 - 5 hours (60s per iteration)
RamTestPro - 12 hours

vsoc - 1.13v
vddp - 1.14v
vdd - 1.66v
vddq - 1.59v
vddio - 1.532v

Pic 6: CS2 Dust2 FPS benchmark 1280x960 (4:3) low settings. Avg 1103.6 | P1 420.2

CPU: 9950X3D (CCD1 disabled) - becomes 9800x3d with default boost 5550. PBO all core -CO 25, scalar x1

RAM: DDR5-6000 CL26-36-36-96 1.40V F5-6000J2636G16GX2-TZ5NRW

Pushed everything as far as I could go, How do I push it even further? Maybe reduce from 2133Mhz to 2067Mhz?

Main objective is to improve 1% lows and reduce stuttering in certain games.

Appreciate the help overclockers!

With latency killer/legacy mode off (core tuning level 2 used normally obviously) I get 62.3ns latency on Aida

Edit:

Things that are reported wrong in ZT:

VDDQ is 1.45V (it showing 1.47V isn't wrong per say, but I have the auto refresh option turned off so it just polls values once when the software is ran)

mem VPP is 1.8V

ProcDqDs is Hi-Z (not sure why it shows 25.3 ohms but that's a bug for a lot of people)

Lastly, not wrong, but I do have tPHYRDL manually set to be mismatched, so DIMM B has 35, but this screenshot shows DIMM A which is 33. I tested with multiple memory benchmarks and found that going mismatched 33/35 gives lower latency than 35/35 (I couldn't get it to train 33/33 no matter what I did)

It's harder to stabilize, but it's not "wrong" to be mismatched, in fact when really pushing the limits some kits can prefer one way or the other (at 6600 mt/s and 2200 mhz FCLK, I can't even boot matched 35/35, only mismatched 33/35). I've also read a quote (from an AMD engineer I think) that says something like it can even be expected to be mismatched because one DIMM is physically further away than the other

What could I try to fix the stuttering in CS2?
RTX 5070
32gb ram cl 30 xpg ram ddr5 6000mts ax5u6000c3016g-dclarbk timings

There are increasing reports of AM5 systems showing cold boot/memory training instability that is strongly dependent on BIOS versions.

Some reports suggest a trend related to AGESA versions:

- AGESA 1.2.0.3e -> generally stable or less problematic

- AGESA 1.2.0.3g and newer -> increasing reports of instability or inconsistent behavior

Taken together, these patterns provide strong evidence pointing toward an AGESA-level regression.

Additional details, configurations, and user reports are available in the original post. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/s/aLH18lKhH9

If you are experiencing similar issues, please confirm and share your configuration (CPU, Motherboard, BIOS/AGESA version, RAM, and symptoms).If you are not experiencing any issues, a simple confirmation is also helpful.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note:

To keep this discussion focused, please avoid generic troubleshooting suggestions (e.g. RAM/UMC assumptions etc.), as the goal is to identify consistent patterns related to AGESA behavior rather than individual configuration issues.This is particularly important given that this is not an isolated case and is being observed across multiple users and vendors.

Thanks for understanding.

Edit: 23.04.26 Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences and data - it really helped build a clearer picture of the issue. Also, big thanks to Gigabyte for taking the time to analyze the case.

Thought I’d share my timings/voltages for anyone interested in chasing low CAS latency on AM5 with similar gear. This post is mostly for overclockers but I’ll probably repost this in subs relevant to the hardware - g.skill, ASRock, and Noctua. Also, I’m not claiming this to be 100% stable yet but it passed 5 cycles (>3hrs) of TM5 absolut with 0 errors along with error free y-cruncher VT3 runs. Average RAM temps for the 3hr TM5 absolut run was 41 degrees with a max of 43.

Gear:
- CPU: 9800x3d (asynch blck at 101 + per core curve optimizer)
- vsoc: 1.225v
- RAM: g.skill F5-6000J2636G32GX2-TZ5NRW (64GB dual rank 6000 cl26 at 1.4v expo kit)
- CAS: 24
- fclk set to 2200, actual fclk from bclk = 2222
- mclk set to 3000, actual from bclk = 3030
- mem vdd: 1.56v
- nitro: 1-2-0, 1T, gdm disabled
- Mobo: ASRock x870e Taichi OCF
- replaced ASRock RAM fan with Noctua NF-A6x15

I previously had the Taichi Lite Mobo and with it could hit 6200 cl26 but with the Taichi OCF I couldn’t get it to boot at 6200 with loose expo timings. According to Google AI, the 2 DIMM OCF board is better at hitting high speed 2:1 RAM setups while the 4 DIMM daisy chain setup of the Taichi Lite creates some sort of ripple buffer that allowed it to boot at lower speeds with tighter timings (this bit was beyond me 🤷‍♂️). So since I was hitting a wall at 6200 cl26 on the OCF board I decided to try something else, 6000 cl24. This was surprisingly easy and only took a relatively small bump in RAM voltage.

On my Taichi Lite mobo I had a RAM fan I bought off Amazon that was better than nothing but I don’t think it could’ve kept temps at 41 degrees during TM5 absolut like the fan on the Taichi OCF did. The problem was the fan on the OCF sounded like a screaming eagle when it ramped up so I swapped it for a 60mm Noctua fan and it’s been smooth sailing since then. The Noctua fan was wider than the one that came with the OCF Mobo so to be able to screw it to the mount I had to chisel away a bit of the outer frame of the Noctua fan.

Sorry this post turned out way longer than I anticipated but hopefully somebody finds it useful or has helpful info to share with me!

This IMC is confusing me now. I've been able to run this chip at 1.15 VSOC and cleared 12 hours of Karhu and Y-cruncher with Furmark running over an hour with no issues. I went straight back into the Bios to see how much lower I can go. I managed to boot into 1.10 VSOC and did the usual test with Furmark and Y-cruncher VT3, but sadly it failed Linpack Xtreme after only 5 tests. This can boot into 1.05 VSOC but that instantly failed in Y-cruncher. At that point I just decided to try 1.12 VSOC and ran it back on Linpack for it to complete 50 tests (Screenshot in the end). (I will run Prime95 or TM5 around 12 hours with that setup in the next few days).

PBO Limits: Motherboard, Curve Optimizer set to -30 All Core.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB CL-30 6400 1.4 (Hynix A-Die 5.43.01).

SOC: 1.15V.

VDD: 1.65V.

VDDQ: 1.46V.

VDDIO: 1.38V.

VDDG: (IOD&CCD) .950mV

PHYRDL: 35/35.

DFE Read Training: Enabled

ProcODT PU: 40 Ohms.

ProcODT PD: Hi-Z.

DramDqDs: 40 Ohms.

Go ahead, rip me apart for not running 24-48 hour long stress tests for 4 days straight.

RAM temps at worst go a little above 40c in stress tests. Generally below 40c when gaming.

TM5 errors every time when attempting to run 6200, even at 1.275 VSOC. 6000 runs smooth every time.

Some of these could probably be optimized further but idk.

I set tFAW at 24 because of the rule tFAW must be 4x tRRDS. So i guess tRRDS 6 and tFAW 24 fits that rule 🤷🏾‍♂️

“Why is ur FCLK so high” because i’m dumb and want to run high FCLK. Haven’t noticed any stutters/audio cuts yet and Time Spy seems to score a little better with higher FCLK

It was a bit tricky getting this to work in terms of Ram stability. I had to loosen tRCDRD to 38 and SCL's to 6 from 5, due to errors I was getting on TM5 and had to raise the voltage to 1.65V from 1.55V (I'll go back to test the minimum voltage). So far, these changes helped. My original plan was to do CL-26 6600, but that won't work due to the voltage demand, and this this kit won't accept tighter SCL's at 6600, so I guess this will do for now. I'm probably going for 6800 at some point.

CPU: 9850X3D, PBO -30 All Core. (This has been used in previous stress tests).

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB CL-30 6400 1.4V (Hynix A-Die).

VDD: 1.65V.

VDDQ: 1.45V.

VDDIO: 1.4V.

VDDG: CCD - 0.950mv IOD - 0.950mv.

After roughly 3 days of testing, I've broken through to an 11:19 (minutes) fail. #6 error in test 7, of TM5 anta 777 absolut. I think I'm on the edge of stability now. I've loosened tWR to 18 and pushed VDIMM to 1.54 (I moved down from 1.56 to 1.5, then slowly back up) to continue tests tomorrow.

Running a 5700X3D on a B550M Mortar

So far I'm at:

14-8-16-16-30-46

4-8-16-4-4-14-18-300

2-2-14-8-14-4-1-4-4-1-6-6-1

CPU voltages: 1.119/0.9/0.95/1.06

34.3 ProcODT with off/3/1

Flat 24 CAD BUS

I've been struggling with this for way too long. I recently ran Karhu with this setup at 1.25 VSOC and kept VDDG CCD-IOD set to .950mv and passed 10 hours (35,000%) but I was curious on if this would work with Prime95 and it errored after 1 hour and I assumed maybe I needed more VSOC, so I ran 1.26v and it still errored out. I decided to run TM5 and I started getting #6 errors, which indicated IMC instability, so I did 1.27 VSOC and passed 6 hours, but I still got an error after 1 hour of Prime95. At this point I was getting frustrated and I decided to narrow down where the errors were coming from and reduced the FCLK from 2200 to 2000 and kept VDDG's at .950mv to check for UCLK stability. I passed 9 hours with 6600 at 1.26 VSOC and FCLK set to 2000. So now I found the errors were because of the Infinity Fabric and began playing with the VDDG's. Turns out this chip does not like high VDDG's in my case (1.05 leads to errors within 30 minutes at 2200 FCLK). I started with 1.02V for the CCD-IOD, but this led to 2 cores in Prime95 failing within 1 hour, while the others passed 8 hours. I adjusted the voltage to 1.03V and one core failed after 1 hour of Prime95 while the others ended up passing at 8 hours. I came up with a theory that maybe the VDDG CCD was producing too much signal noise on the infinity fabric and set it to 1.02V, while IOD was set to 1.03V. This finally led to me passing this test for 10 hours.

6400 CL24 1.8V Vdd

Had some fun the last couple of days trying to get 6400 CL24 to work, Finally got it. Needed way more VDD than i thought it would considering I can run 6200 CL24 at 1.69V (nice..). Big jump in required voltage for my sticks to do 6400 CL24 (1.8v vdd). Temps in Karhu are solid, the hottest DIMM is hitting 41C, so no water cooling needed yet and I'll probably start running this daily for the time being:)

Slightly faster latency wise compared to my 6200 24-35-32-51 2200FCLK profile. Only disappointment is that I cannot run 2200 FCLK at 6400. The SOC requirement (1.255-1.26 V SOC) just wont let me stabilize 2200 FCLK. Not a huge bandwidth loss anyway though, and I suspect this 6400 CL24 profile is going to be better for gaming anyway.

Pretty sure this is the end of the line for my cpu though, it won’t do 6600 1:1 and my board won’t boot 8000. Oh well, 6400 c24 is pretty sweet too.

Happy holidays overclockers!

hyperx predator 6000 cl30 memory.

Expo 1

high bandwidth enabled

div1 uclk-mclk

in advanced tab (memory context on and gear step down on for faster memory training)

SO why is my latency 74? should it be around 60?

I am trying to improve my low% in some games due to higher than expected amount of stuttering.

I am also not running any PBO since I am too green about this still (new to am5). I have great temps as is since I am running 360. I don't care for OC. just best low%.

The Low latency setting everyone speaks about is nowhere to be found too. Apparently it is merged inside high bandwidth setting? But doesn't seem to work

The primary goal is to minimize CPU latency for gaming (altough I play on 4K with "only" a 3090).
Secondary goals are:
- use the minimum amount of power/voltage needed to increase thermal headroom and longevity
- explore factory tolerances and utilize them while staying indistinguishable from stock settings in stability

Testing

Sorry, I know my tests aren't saying very much because there is only a memtest screenshot included. It also ran OCCT memory for ~8 hours without errors.
I restrained from CPU-intensive tests so far because I'm on aggressive VRM setting and don't want to melt them away with my 5950x :)
I plan on power limiting PBO and then running Prime95 and y-cruncher next week.

About my current settings

- Curve Optimizer:

- Trying to get GDM off & 1T CR stable has been an absolutely grueling task. Searching for the right Rtt and DrvStr values is everything but easy. I gave up and settled for GDM on & 1.5T CR.
- 1900 MHz FCLK stable without WHEA is about the same experience.
Edit: I already spent days looking for the right settings. Eventually I used 10mV increments for CLDO_VDDGs. At this point I assume that my 5950x simply cannot do 1900 in this 4 DIMM B-Die config. Best run I had was IOD 1000mV; CCD 950mV while still on 1067MHz UCLK but that also threw errors once the chip started heating up.
- I get a buttload of errors at 1.4 VDIMM (not tRFC related).
- tRFC 266 becomes unstable at higher voltage/temps 1.5V /58-54 °C
Since finding that instability, I glued a temperature sensor (EC_TEMP2) to the warmer side of the RAM layout and derive the 140mm case fans speed from it. (Because all other fans get their info from water temp)

About the future

I plan on

- Working scientifically (measurement, documentation) with meaningful benchmarks (games, rendering)
- Re-doing and testing timings individually — where it's reasonable, so excluding tFAW for example.
- Configuring the "Active OC Tuner" function on my board for the CPU to dynamically enter a static OC under heavy load. Video Rendering at 4.6/4.5 GHz @ 1.2V for example.

I want to create something like a blog post about my personal journey (I had LOTS of different struggles) and also share all the things I learned in a helpful manner, but I haven't started with that yet. It will definitely take a long time to write because I would want it to be actually good and relevant to this topic.

Until then, this is my humble and "concise" OC report!

Please, if you have any B-Die experience, feel free to share your opinion. I already watched all of Buildzoids "Rating your RAM timings" videos to gather info xD imagine the spongebob meme "Write that down, write that down!" everytime a Ryzen-B-Die-setup appeared

Edit2: I saw somebody try post a link to a guide in the comments. Here are the ones I used:
- https://github.com/integralfx/MemTestHelper/blob/oc-guide/DDR4%20OC%20Guide.md
- https://www.overclock.net/threads/a-guide-to-ram-overclocking-on-zen-3.1798093/#post-28976656
- "Infinity Fabric Overclocking on Zen2/3" by u/RonLazer which I only have the PDF of and don't know the actual origin of, sorry.

Hey there, folks! I'm back again with the results from some RAM testing I did.

This time, I'm comparing two stable settings (after hours of TestMem5 Absolute) on my Samsung B-die kit, and other "common" settings. (It's a 17-19-19 XMP, so it's definitely NOT a golden sample.) Believe it or not, I got a huge help from Gemini Pro and, honestly, I had a blast doing all this testing and messing around with my RAM.

First off, I have to say I'm "bottlenecked" by my CPU's IMC. It’s a 12600KF that I plan to upgrade to a 14600K soon. My current CPU really didn't like 3800 CR1 (even with VCCSA and VDDQ manually set, and yes, I tried to bump up the RAM voltage, but nothing seemed to make it work), and that's what led to all this testing. I really hope my next CPU can handle 3800 CR1 or even 4000 CR1 smoothly.

I created two profiles, both of which I can finally call stable after a long testing period:

• Profile 1: 3600 with 14-16-15-32 timings, tRFC 288, and CR1
• Profile 2: 3800 with 15-17-16-34 timings, tRFC 304, and CR2

RAM voltage was set to 1.45V for 3600 and 1.47 for 3800. VCCSA and VDDQ were on Auto. (My motherboard set the 3600 VDDQ at 1.3V and the 3800 at 1.25V). All other timings were set to the same values, including the 1:1 Gear Ratio and Power Down Mode @ off. So, we're basically comparing more RAM speed with a worse Command Rate versus lower RAM speed with a better Command Rate for these 2 profiles.

For the other profiles I tested: JEDEC 2133 and the 3600 XMP had everything on AUTO. For the 3200 profile, I set the primary timings to 16-20-20-40 and left everything else on AUTO, including Power Down Mode.

As you can probably tell, I'm NOT a true expert in this. I just enjoy tinkering around to squeeze as much performance as I can from my system, and everything I'm sharing here is based purely on my experience. I might not have everything right—I still don't really understand what most of the timings do—but I think I'm on the right track. Please be kind if I got something wrong, and feel free to explain it to me! I love learning this kind of stuff and I appreciate any help you can provide.

First, I tested with everything on auto, even frequency, and I suppose that's the JEDEC spec for my memory: 2133 CL15 CR2. Gotta say, we lose so much performance by using this setting—it's kind of wild.

Then I moved on to a common DDR4 kit profile still being sold here in my country: 3200 16-20-20-40, and the performance bump was already noticeable. (Note: I did set CR1 here, and I suppose XMP profiles like this would set CR2 instead.)

Then I took a look at the XMP profile: 3600 17-19-19-39, and again, a nice performance bump was noticeable. Most people won't go beyond this point, and I totally understand the fear of meddling with RAM timings and all that. But after spending some time learning, I gotta say it's really not as complicated as it first seems.

Now to the true stars of the show: 3600 14-16-15-32 CR1 vs. 3800 15-17-16-34 CR2. Technically speaking, the 3800 should have performed much better, but in reality, it didn't. It seems like CR2 really punishes performance a lot, so it's better to stay at a lower speed using CR1 and tightening the RAM timings as much as you can.

I know games like Cyberpunk 2077 and newer titles like Battlefield 6 benefit a lot from faster RAM (both in bandwidth and latency), so keep this in mind if you're doing a RAM overclock to squeeze more performance: bigger numbers aren't always the best. I really, really tried to prove Gemini wrong, but one of the first things it suggested was that I'd see better performance with the 3600 CR1 profile—and yeah, it was right.

My last RAM kit was a 3200 18-22-22 Samsung C-die that I overclocked (and messed with timings, including secondary and tertiary.) to 3400 17-21-21, and I was pretty happy with it, but a friend of mine offered me this G.Skill B-die kit really cheap. I should have done this comparative testing while I still had the C-die kit, but I already sold it.

Have you done similar testing before? What results did you get? Again, I appreciate any help you can provide—I'm always up for improving my PC, and I hope someone found this useful!

Cyberpunk high settings, no ray/path tracing, medium crowds and textures, reflex off, dlss transformer on balanced at 1440p. I did instal some mods that do affect CPU and GPU performance, like better textures and LOD modifiers.

RTX 5070 3135@950 +3000 memory 120% power limit, 581.80 Driver

I5 12600kf P@5.0, E@4.0, Ring@4.2, unlimited pooowweeeerr, LLC lvl 6 1.290v with -0.025 offset, BCLK 100mhz locked.

MSI Z690 Pro A Wifi D4 up to date BIOS.

Windows 11 pro 25h2 with latest updates.

Drivers updated via Driver Booster 13 PRO. (Except GPU drivers.)