What does xmp do for my gaming rig?

[RedHaze1911]

So i just built my first gaming rig.I have a 6700k 4,7 ghz OCd cpu with a coolermaster v8 gts air cpu cooler,16 gigs of ddr4 ram and a MSI 980Ti Twin frozr 6gig GPU(1356mhz OC) with a 1000W corsair gold certified psu all rigged up to a z170a gaming pro MSI mobo.
This mobo has click bios 5 and it seems its very good for easy OCing and general overview of the system. It has a "gaming mode" button and everything,but next to it theres an XMP button and it has like 2 settings which are just numbers... setting 1,setting 2 and i can not activate gaming mode if xmp is on. So i was wondering if anyone could explain to me what this does as simple as possible. Do i need to set some profile for it to have any effect in the first place or are those two settings like pre-made for my pc or are they empty. Cuz i believe that the ram frequency hasnt changed... the default is 2400mhz and it says its the same after i press the button in the menu.

Thx for any replys

 

[Shaun o]

Xmp stands for Extreme Memory Profile as an Acronym.

When you buy memory that has, Xmp modes.
It allows the base factory setting of the memory to be overclocked in speed rating.
Selecting an Xmp mode option it will do two things.

First it will raise the voltage of the memory chips from 1.5v to about 1.65v

The reason why, is because when you overclock memory in speed or set xmp mode it requires more power to keep it stable so it does not produce memory errors because the ram chips work at a higher speed rating and consume more voltage doing so.
The extra voltage keeps the memory stable due to the increase in speed of the memory in Mhz Megahertz.

The second thing xmp mode does as well as increasing the clock speed the memory runs at, is to change what we call the timing settings, mostly called latency.

The memory once in xmp mode and overclocked requires higher latency timings.

The timings are basically how often the memory can be read from or written to when the memory is used with your cpu running in the system, or how often it does one clock cycle or refresh, update of data stored in the memory chips.


At the same time it tells the cpu at what times it can request or send data stored in the memory chips.
To prevent errors in memory and with the cpu it is a way of syncing them together to avoid any errors when overclocking and keeps everything to set timings.

known between the cpu and the memory as asynchronous.

 

[RedHaze1911]

Xmp stands for Extreme Memory Profile as an Acronym.

When you buy memory that has, Xmp modes.
It allows the base factory setting of the memory to be overclocked in speed rating.
select an Xmp mode option it will do two things, first it will raise the voltage of the memory chips from 1.5v to about 1.65v

The reason why is because when you overclock memory in speed in xmp mode it requires more power to keep it stable so it does not produce memory errors because the ram chips work at a higher speed rating and consume more voltage doing so.

The second thing xmp mode does as well as increasing the clock speed the memory runs at, is to change what we call the timing settings, mostly called latency.
The memory once in xmp mode overclocked requires higher latency timings.
The timings are basically how often the memory can be read from or written to when the memory is used with your cpu running in the system.

So it tells the cpu at what times it can request or send data stored in the memory chips.
To prevent errors in memory and with the cpu it is a way of syncing them together to avoid any errors when overclocking the memory and keeps everything to set timings.

So it should automatically raise my 2400mhz to higher... but it does not show any difference in the bios! perhaps in the bios it just shows the stock frequency,idk.
Do you know of any programs that can tell me exactly what specs i currently have on my ram cards? like cpuz,only for ram maby?

 

[drtweak]

^^ What he said. In easy simpler terms. They are just preset overlclocking settings that are designed for that RAM so you don't have to go in and mess with the settings yourself and do it manually and get unstable settings. The XMP settings usually are most stable if you want to overclock.

 

[photonboy]

2400MHz-> If this is the rated memory speed then that's what XMP should assign. The "optimal" rating is the maximum it's rated for NOT to be confused with overclocking.

GAMING MODE-> I assume it's disabled with XMP on because it would allow overclocking of memory.

Other:
I would suggest leaving XMP on for now so you can setup your system and test for stability. Investigate later if overclocking will help at all (arguably not).

 

[RedHaze1911]

Hmm,ok,il leave it on and see if theres any changes... i figure messing with the ram wont give me more than a couple extra frames per second anyway so no biggie i guess...