Ballistix Sport LT Overclocking

Jamin280672 · 27 Jun 2020 at 20:03

I brought 2 x 16gb kits of Ballistix RGB (BL2K8G36C16U4BL) 3600mhz CL16, so thats all 4 slots filled, also E-Die, currently running at 3733mhz 1.45v 16-18-16-36-56-GDM with tightened sub timings too, tRCDRD seems to be the weak point on this die, anyway, here's the result, very impressed especially as I only paid £90 a kit.

michty_me · 27 Jun 2020 at 22:00

Pretty impressive that!
I need to do a bit more tweaking of my set but just not had much time to sit and fiddle about.

Jamin280672 · 29 Jun 2020 at 05:15

michty_me said:
Pretty impressive that!
I need to do a bit more tweaking of my set but just not had much time to sit and fiddle about.

Lol I flashed the latest beta bios which is am4 pi 1.0.0.2 or something like that, the latest agesa, and also tried the bios with agesa 1.0.0.5 in it and the overclock was no longer stable, but they way it was crashing it seemed to be more of an infinity fabric crash, couldn't even get my Radeon 7 to under volt with those 2 bioses either, so I back flashed to v18 which is agesa 1.0.0.4, all is good in the world again now.

michty_me · 29 Jun 2020 at 06:23

Jamin280672 said:
Lol I flashed the latest beta bios which is am4 pi 1.0.0.2 or something like that, the latest agesa, and also tried the bios with agesa 1.0.0.5 in it and the overclock was no longer stable, but they way it was crashing it seemed to be more of an infinity fabric crash, couldn't even get my Radeon 7 to under volt with those 2 bioses either, so I back flashed to v18 which is agesa 1.0.0.4, all is good in the world again now.

I'll need to check to see what agesa I am on. I know I'm not on any of the latest BIOS anyway. It's never given me any reason to upgrade so I've just left it.

Jamin280672 · 29 Jun 2020 at 18:58

Just for noting, I just ran this same kits of ram upto 4000mhz 18-22-22-42-GDM, couldn't really be bothered to tweak sub timings, I just wanted to see if it would work, and indeed it did and passed dram calculators default tests, the subs were loose as hell though, voltage was 1.45v and had to run it at 2:1 with the FCLK, latency was about 77ns

If Ryzen 4000's FCLK can do 2000mhz, this will be very handy being able to hit 4000mhz with these sticks running it 1:1

michty_me · 29 Jun 2020 at 19:22

Jamin280672 said:
Just for noting, I just ran this same kits of ram upto 4000mhz 18-22-22-42-GDM, couldn't really be bothered to tweak sub timings, I just wanted to see if it would work, and indeed it did and passed dram calculators default tests, the subs were loose as hell though, voltage was 1.45v and had to run it at 2:1 with the FCLK.

If Ryzen 4000's FCLK can do 2000mhz, this will be very handy being able to hit 4000mhz with these sticks running it 1:1

That is impressive!! I don't think my FLCK wants to play any higher than 1867 though.
Handy to know and may experiment with ram even though it won't match the IF.

Jamin280672 · 29 Jun 2020 at 19:39

michty_me said:
That is impressive!! I don't think my FLCK wants to play any higher than 1867 though.
Handy to know and may experiment with ram even though it won't match the IF.

Yeah you have to run FCLK at 2:1 to go higher, mine is the same, thats why im hoping Ryzen 4000 bring 2000mhz or higher FCLK.

That latency is punishing though.

michty_me · 29 Jun 2020 at 22:27

Jamin280672 said:
Yeah you have to run FCLK at 2:1 to go higher, mine is the same, thats why im hoping Ryzen 4000 bring 2000mhz or higher FCLK.

That latency is punishing though.

I'll be sticking with my 3600 until the 4000 series starts dropping in price before I upgrade. If the RAM was able to hit 4000 stable with tighter timings, that would be pretty mega.

arc@css · 12 Aug 2020 at 01:05

I have this memory (32GB of 3200) and am wondering where a good place to start is for improving latency/tuning the performance?

This is what I have things set to at the moment:

Thanks!

BallistixOnZ490 · 12 Sep 2020 at 14:31

thewanted said:
Hey,

Amazing results! What is.the product code for your RAM?

I've been pushing it further, if you thought that was amazing ...

This is 24/7 stable - 4200 MHz CL16, also currently with 600 tRFC. It takes 1.53125v DRAM and 1.15v VCCIO.

This might be a world record for 2x16 Gb at CL16?

4266 wont get stable at any looser timings or 1.55v, maybe due to 16 Gb sticks or IMC limit.

I paid just £150 for 2x16 Gb 3200 Mhz LT Sport, but this was before Crucial started binning any higher and I had no clue when buying it what Micron E Die was, I just wanted something better than my previous 2666 kit that maxed out at 3200 CL14 1.45v.

On stock timings and 1.35v it will run fine at 3600 Mhz. 3600 CL14 takes 1.4v, so it could be possible for a CL16 3600 kit to reach this.

The problem is this kit was bought when 3200 was the fastest Crucial made, so its unlikely to still be possible as I think these same chips have now become binned for the 4000 MHz CL18 1.35v kit.

Other things I've read about is that you need to have a daisy chain board and not t topology, and only one channel populated to get the best results. In most cases the motherboard and IMC hold ram overclocking back.

MegaPinches · 4 Nov 2020 at 11:58

Anyone retesting these with newer Agesa with increased memory compatibility getting better results? (compared to Nov '19), is this possible as seems can get tighter timings now, or maybe not tested long enough yet....

EDIT: Usmus says this "Look out for motherboard BIOS updates that include updates to AGESA as newer versions improve memory-tuning capabilities."

I just assumed mem timings would be 100% down to mem chips, anyone recommend anything faster than HCI memtest?

michty_me · 4 Nov 2020 at 12:11

I'm still on a very old firmware. I'll need to update for the new CPUs at some point though!

TorontozFinest · 2 Dec 2020 at 16:29

BallistixOnZ490 said:
I've been pushing it further, if you thought that was amazing ...

This is 24/7 stable - 4200 MHz CL16, also currently with 600 tRFC. It takes 1.53125v DRAM and 1.15v VCCIO.

This might be a world record for 2x16 Gb at CL16?

4266 wont get stable at any looser timings or 1.55v, maybe due to 16 Gb sticks or IMC limit.

I paid just £150 for 2x16 Gb 3200 Mhz LT Sport, but this was before Crucial started binning any higher and I had no clue when buying it what Micron E Die was, I just wanted something better than my previous 2666 kit that maxed out at 3200 CL14 1.45v.

On stock timings and 1.35v it will run fine at 3600 Mhz. 3600 CL14 takes 1.4v, so it could be possible for a CL16 3600 kit to reach this.

The problem is this kit was bought when 3200 was the fastest Crucial made, so its unlikely to still be possible as I think these same chips have now become binned for the 4000 MHz CL18 1.35v kit.

Other things I've read about is that you need to have a daisy chain board and not t topology, and only one channel populated to get the best results. In most cases the motherboard and IMC hold ram overclocking back.

I have the same kit, I think my kit or mobo gave me a bit more headroom.

i7 10700k clocked at min 5.1Ghz (with [email protected], [email protected] [email protected])
MSI z490i Unify

I have 4400Mhz at 18-20-20-44 2T 1.53v approx AIDA 6200mb/s 46-47 latency

I have 4200Mhz at 16-19-19-42 1T 1.47v approx AIDA 6000mb/s 45-46 latency

I have 4000Mhz at 14-18-18-38 1T 1.50v approx AIDA 5800mb/s 44-45 latency

All rock stable tested with 8 hours minimum memtest.

Shonk · 3 Dec 2020 at 02:51

TorontozFinest said:
I have the same kit, I think my kit or mobo gave me a bit more headroom.

i7 10700k clocked at min 5.1Ghz (with [email protected], [email protected] [email protected])
MSI z490i Unify

I have 4400Mhz at 18-20-20-44 2T 1.53v approx AIDA 6200mb/s 46-47 latency

I have 4200Mhz at 16-19-19-42 1T 1.47v approx AIDA 6000mb/s 45-46 latency

I have 4000Mhz at 14-18-18-38 1T 1.50v approx AIDA 5800mb/s 44-45 latency

All rock stable tested with 8 hours minimum memtest.

why would you want that 47 latency lol
my 3600 runs at 39.3ns at 3600

pc-guy · 3 Dec 2020 at 16:26

Shonk said:
my 3600 runs at 39.3ns at 3600

how? screenshot please

edit mis-read that as ryzen 3600 with 3600 RAM.

clear an intel system to get those ns.

TorontozFinest · 4 Dec 2020 at 12:46

Worked on the sub timings and I have the 4000Mhz at 14-18-18-38 1T down to 1.47v and latency now down to 41.7

quite happy about that, and will likely keep this as my daily.

TorontozFinest · 4 Dec 2020 at 12:50

Shonk said:
why would you want that 47 latency lol
my 3600 runs at 39.3ns at 3600

I'm not sure if you know that latency is not the be all end all. If you have much higher bandwidth you can work with much larger files and manipulate them, someone who works with 2GB excel files, more bandwidth is very important. Image/Video editing, CAD work, pretty much anything that works with excessively larger files benefits more from faster frequency than latency and timings.

BallistixOnZ490 · 12 Dec 2020 at 16:07

From my testing Ive found that its generally only worth increasing Cas latency per 300 Mhz. 200 Mhz isnt enough increase to offset needing to raise Cas another step and actually lowers performance a bit.

You're only looking at a 1-2% performance boost per +400 Mhz at +1 Cas Latency at least above 3600 Mhz. Performance increase from ram frequency seems to flatten above 3600 CL14.

3600 CL14 / 4000 CL15 / 4400 CL16 are the sweet spots to try and aim for if possible on whichever kit you have, but at the same time not worth spending double the price to buy 4000+ rated kits over a 3600 kit and just pushing it to CL14.

But still all this ram and 5.1 Ghz 10900K and still no RTX 3080 to put with it in sight

michty_me · 12 Dec 2020 at 16:28

BallistixOnZ490 said:
From my testing Ive found that its generally only worth increasing Cas latency per 300 Mhz. 200 Mhz isnt enough increase to offset needing to raise Cas another step and actually lowers performance a bit.

You're only looking at a 1-2% performance boost per +400 Mhz at +1 Cas Latency at least above 3600 Mhz. Performance increase from ram frequency seems to flatten above 3600 CL14.

3600 CL14 / 4000 CL15 / 4400 CL16 are the sweet spots to try and aim for if possible on whichever kit you have, but at the same time not worth spending double the price to buy 4000+ rated kits over a 3600 kit and just pushing it to CL14.

But still all this ram and 5.1 Ghz 10900K and still no RTX 3080 to put with it in sight

Thats interesting to know. I'll maybe just drop back from 3733 to 3600 then.

BallistixOnZ490 · 12 Dec 2020 at 16:32

I tried to drop mine to 4000 CL15 but it wouldn't manage it, only 3600 CL14, 3900 CL15, 4200 CL16.

I tested in Witcher 3 and heavily modded Minecraft ages ago and gains were minimal / insignificant at best. +200 Mhz with 2 extra cas lost a couple of FPS on average.

And Anno games also run shockingly when the FPS counter is turned on, 80 FPS in 2070 and 30 FPS in 1800 with a 10900K and 1080 Ti (they are massive CPU hogs).