XMP profile not as advertised?

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

I have a new build and cannot seem to get the memory running at advertised speeds. The build is a Ryzen 2600, Asus Prime X470 Pro, 16GB (2x8) Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 3000MHz CL15, and a Sapphire Nitro+ RX580 special edition with a Seasonic 650w Focus Gold. I enabled DOCP in the BIOS and looked at the XMP profile of the RAM sticks. The tested speed on the Corsair website is 15-17-17-35, but the XMP profile comes up as 16-17-17-35. Is there something I'm missing?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes. You must disable gear down setting I think is the issue. Haven't done any Ryzen builds yet, but after significant reading on the architecture this odd vs even memory timings, especially CAS latency, keeps coming up in relation to the gear down setting.

I believe that over a certain speed, 2400mhz I think, Ryzen doesn't like latencies that are odd numbered and rounds up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/6q9zao/ryzen_memory_timing/


Make sure you have the absolute latest bios version for your motherboard installed. Every Ryzen board from first gen on has had issues with memory until the bugs were hammered out in later releases.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

:edit:
I disabled gear down after reading the link you posted. The computer wouldn't post. I reset the CMOS. It seems that this particular RAM profile has an issue on this mobo. But what I don't understand is, if the XMP profile is built into the RAM, then why does it say something else when I look up the profiles in the BIOS?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Are you sure you actually got the sticks you think you got? Did you buy these modules from an official vendor, or a private party, small vendor or unofficial source such as a third party Amazon or Ebay vendor?

You could try looking at them using the free version of Thaiphoon burner which will show you what the actual written XMP profile is, which, by the way, anybody using the paid version could use to rewrite the onboard XMP profile to anything they wanted.

http://www.softnology.biz/


The other thing that might be an option is to simply disable the XMP profile and manually assign the timings and voltage you want based on the XMP profile that you know the memory is supposed to have been programmed with, IF you are sure the memory is actually what you think it is and didn't just get a fake sticker slapped on it with a part number that coincides with a better memory module than these actually are. It's not new. People have been taking modules with worse specs and labeling as models within the same series that have much better specs, but look exactly the same, for years and years.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

darkbreeze, thanks for the info. The screenshots from Thaiphoon are below. I got the ram from Amazon. It looks OK to me, but I see what you're saying about being able to write any XMP profile you wanted. FWIW, the RAM came in a Corsair package that "looked" like it was sealed and not tampered with. But then again, I suppose you can make a package look however you want to.

Right now, the RAM is running at 1.35v, 3000MHz, and 16-17-17-35, even though I have the 15-17-17-35 profile selected in BIOS. The command rate is also 1T. As I posted earlier, disabling gear down seems to upset the situation. If this is an issue with the Ryzen memory controller and odd latency, then I'm OK with running 16 CL, but I'm just trying to 1) understand the XMP/Ryzen interaction and 2) make sure I have the RAM I thought I bought.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Try this.

Disable gear down.

Select the XMP profile.

Increase the DRAM voltage by .005v or whatever the minimal increment it will allow you to increase it by is, and save settings then restart.

If it does the same thing it did before with gear down disabled, do it all again and increase the DRAM voltage by another incremental step. If you get no love by the time you get to 1.4v (Preferably not more than 1.38v) then it's probably not going to allow those settings.

Also, not sure what the memory configuration allows or has as far as settings on your board, and the user manuals are generally terrible in showing this so I can't just go look it up, but if there is a setting for "boot type", with something like Fast boot, Normal, Auto and Disable Fast boot, and don't confuse the memory fast boot setting for the OS/Boot device fast boot setting, then set it to disable. That will force the system to configure all the secondary and tertiary timings every time you make changes elsewhere in the memory section rather than it only changing the primary timings and ignoring the others. I've seen systems where people thought they were good with a particular memory configuration, only to find out later that even though the memory was configured how they had set it, it was in fact riding on a previous configuration and the timings in HWinfo or another utility were not reflecting what the manual configuration in the BIOS should have directed it to be.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Also, this was a kit right? You didn't get these memory modules separately?

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

Yes, it was a kit. Thanks for the detailed reply. I will try that this afternoon and report back what happens.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I'm also going to try and bring in a brotha who has more actual experience on Ryzen. Since he has a Ryzen setup he might know right away what the issue is.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Hey, so I have the 3200mhz version of the same ram on an ASUS board as well. I actually could NOT get my system to boot using DOCP although that was many BIOSes ago. I just manually put all the settings in that I knew the ram could handle and it worked. Thats what I recommend doing.

Also you can try this

https://www.overclock.net/forum/13-amd-general/1640919-ryzen-dram-calculator-1-1-0-beta-2-overclocking-dram-am4.html

If for some reason the manual settings don't work.

Not sure why DOCP sucks, but I also found when I did get it to boot with DOCP on, XFR didn't work and some other features. Like I said that was a while ago, but You're better off making sure that stuff is on and just manually setting it.

 

[drivinfast247]

That exact model of RAM is not on the motherboards QVL list. That could be the issue as well.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

Rogue Leader, thanks man! I used the DDR calculator you linked, and now the RAM is running at 14-16-16-16-32/1T instead of the 15-17-17-17-35 advertised rate. I haven't tested it for stability, but the computer booted fine.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Rogue Leader, thanks man! I used the DDR calculator you linked, and now the RAM is running at 14-16-16-16-32/1T instead of the 15-17-17-17-35 advertised rate. I haven't tested it for stability, but the computer booted fine.

Cool, that calculator is pretty good but I'd definitely test it before living with it. Glad it worked out.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

Well, I'm running memtest86, and I got 1 error on the first pass. I suppose this suggests the OC isn't stable? I mean, we're talking about CL 16 vs. CL 14, which translates into imperceptible speed differences...at least for me. I haven't built a computer in 18 years and really used to enjoy it, so I was just hoping to get the advertised speed out of the ram because OCing has evolved so much. oh well, I guess I'll deal with my first world problem of a fractional nano second slower latency. Thanks for the help, though!

 

[Rogue Leader]

Well, I'm running memtest86, and I got 1 error on the first pass. I suppose this suggests the OC isn't stable? I mean, we're talking about CL 16 vs. CL 14, which translates into imperceptible speed differences...at least for me. I haven't built a computer in 18 years and really used to enjoy it, so I was just hoping to get the advertised speed out of the ram because OCing has evolved so much. oh well, I guess I'll deal with my first world problem of a fractional nano second slower latency. Thanks for the help, though!

Correct 1 error is not stable. Try what Corsair sold it as 15-17-17-35 should work fine.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

If I set the timing manually to 15-17-17-35, and leave everything else on auto with docp off, it reverts to 16-17-17-35. The link darkbreeze posted in the second post discussed Ryzen having issues with odd-numbered CAS timings, and it seems some people have had luck turning gear down off. But that just made my PC unbootable.

On a side note, I have the TPU set to "keep current config," whatever that is. I can set it to I or II, but I don't know if that will help, hurt, or do nothing for the ram issue.

 

[Rogue Leader]

If I set the timing manually to 15-17-17-35, and leave everything else on auto with docp off, it reverts to 16-17-17-35. The link darkbreeze posted in the second post discussed Ryzen having issues with odd-numbered CAS timings, and it seems some people have had luck turning gear down off. But that just made my PC unbootable.

On a side note, I have the TPU set to "keep current config," whatever that is. I can set it to I or II, but I don't know if that will help, hurt, or do nothing for the ram issue.

Leave it on keep current config, I believe that is auto resetting your ram.

I have the same ram at 3200mhz and the timings are 16-17-17-35 so that may just be the solution here. In terms of real life performance you'd probably never know the difference.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Or, you can try upping the memory voltage by .005v with the settings you had, and run Memtest again. I've had MANY occasions where a specific set of timings caused errors in Memtest, but a small bump in DRAM voltage eliminated any further errors during testing in Memtest OR in Prime95 version 26.6 Blend mode. Testing in Memtest isn't a surety of stability after making changes to memory timings. It ONLY tells you if there are any glaring instability or incompatibility issues. You need to run Prime95 version 26.6 and choose the Blend mode option, for 8 hours, or you're in real trouble of potentially having system corrupting micro-errors.

You won't get blue screens, or restarts, or any of that. What you'll get is about 3 to 6 months later, half your data is corrupted. If that's only the OS, not that big of a deal as you can always reinstall. If it's all your game files, pictures, music, etc., it becomes a very bad day scenario. Memory is FAR more likely to create system wide corruption from fiddling with DRAM speed and timings than when overclocking the CPU. Take it seriously, because it is.

If however you can pass two or more passes of all 13 (11 on free versions) Memtest86 tests and 8 hours of Blend mode, then your memory is as reasonably stable as you can ever expect to get it.

I probably might also try manually setting the primary timings, and about three of the secondary timings, and leaving the remainder of the timings individually on Auto, with DOCP off. DOCP only exists to translate XMP settings to AMP, which is the AMD equivalent. If DOCP/AMP are turned off, it can't change your settings. Or you can just leave it at what it likes like Rogue leader suggested.

The difference really isn't going to be all that significant.

 

[jeffrey_dibartolomeo]

I really appreciate the help, guys. I'm just going to leave it at 16-17-17-35 if that's what my configuration likes. It's not worth the going from 16 to 15 latency for possible issues.

Rogue, do you have the 3000MHz version of my ram running at 3200MHz, or do you have the 3200MHz that's supposed to run at CAS 15 and it's running at 16?

 

[Rogue Leader]

I really appreciate the help, guys. I'm just going to leave it at 16-17-17-35 if that's what my configuration likes. It's not worth the going from 16 to 15 latency for possible issues.

Rogue, do you have the 3000MHz version of my ram running at 3200MHz, or do you have the 3200MHz that's supposed to run at CAS 15 and it's running at 16?

I was wrong about my timings. I have the same ram as you but the 3200mhz version and the timing from Corsair is 16-18-18-36 which I manually set and works stable.