Cinebench R15 & Handbrake

In this segment, we will look at the performance of the memory at stock XMP and overclocked settings in two popular applications, Cinebench R15 and Handbrake. The CPU, here, will be operating at its overclocked state of 3.8Ghz on all cores, using 1.3 (1.325) volts. Whilst Cinebench is primarily a CPU dependent program in its entirety, faster RAM (especially as the number of cores goes up) can make a difference here. Cinebench really is the application of choice for raw CPU performance numbers, as it provides a consistent and easy to understand 'higher is better' number that has become many people's go-to app.

By default, we saw a very respectable score of 1614. With the memory overclocked... well well well. We saw a 36 point increase, all the way to 1650cb, which certainly isn't something to be ignored. I have to admit I was surprised by this, and it was perhaps my first clue that lower memory latency on Ryzen (in spite of what Aida64's benchmark had to say) was pretty substantial stuff.

To test Handbrake, I encoded a 1080p 60fps file (originally in .mov format) into a 720p 30fps file using H.264 (still, for the most part, the most widely used Codec out there for videos). Suffice to say that overclocking your CPU will give you more tangible benefits, here, and a 600Mhz boost to the Apacer kit was only enough for a 0.3 FPS increase between encoding runs. I don't expect, therefore, for much to be gained from 200Mhz! That said, given the notable effect even small increases in memory frequency have on Ryzen, and I might be proved wrong...

With the memory running at the default XMP profile, the file was encoded with an average FPS of 42.5. With the memory running at the same speed, but at tighter timings, we saw the average FPS increase by 0.5, to 43. Worth it? Probably not. Next, we move onto Guru3D's stress test of choice, as well as the now ubiquitous 7Zip application.