G.Skill Flare X 3200 MHz (AMD Ryzen) memory review

Sweeeper

2017-04-04 09:12

First !! Well joke aside. Got the same ram for my msi xpower setup with bios 1.3 The ram are stuck at 2400 mhz.. if i go 3200 mhz windows will blue screen me with memory error. So hope this soon is relevant for me.

#5415951

Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2017-04-04 09:14

First !! Well joke aside. Got the same ram for my msi xpower setup with bios 1.3 The ram are stuck at 2400 mhz.. if i go 3200 mhz windows will blue screen me with memory error. So hope this soon is relevant for me.

Yeah I am releasing the XPower review tomorrow and am also complaining about memory compatibility in that review as well. MSI will release new BIOSes by next week that hopefully addresses this.

#5415962

Cryio

2017-04-04 10:27

On page 4: "When Microsoft launched Windows Vista 1 GB was just be bare minimum recommended specification. They actually recommend 2 GB with Windows 7 at minimum." Actually Vista's minimum was 512 MB and W7's was 1 GB.

#5415970

Sunesha

2017-04-04 11:17

Thanks for the testing. This was definitely a helpful insight which memory to buy.

#5415987

Evildead666

2017-04-04 12:37

Great test hilbert. Good to see some results at above 1080p also 🙂

#5415995

Dygaza

2017-04-04 12:57

Very good article. There are very often very impressive gains with faster memories. Now we just need those bios updates to come so we get access to even faster memories.

#5416003

HittriX

2017-04-04 13:18

I'm here with the same memory kit you got with your r7 1800x unboxing kit, Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15, and i am also stuck at 2400mhz with my MSI B350 Tomahawk at bios 1.2 for now.

#5416005

Loophole35

2017-04-04 13:19

Great review/test. So an overclock shows more improvement than memory bandwidth increases, but memory does make a difference. Would love to see 3600MHz memory working with Ryzen. Hilbert, do you think you will have time to test the R7 with a Fury X or 480, and compare it to Intel so we can put this new theory that Nvidia is gimping AMD to bed or shine light on it with reputable data.

#5416006

Embra

2017-04-04 13:19

Awesome review HH. I appreciate the detailed through reviews you do. Main reason I love this site. Thank you! 🙂

#5416007

Embra

2017-04-04 13:22

Yeah I am releasing the XPower review tomorrow and am also complaining about memory compatibility in that review as well. MSI will release new BIOSes by next week that hopefully addresses this.

Similar issue for me. I had better success with the cpu at base clock first, then OCing oddly.

#5416012

Denial

2017-04-04 13:39

On page 4: "When Microsoft launched Windows Vista 1 GB was just be bare minimum recommended specification. They actually recommend 2 GB with Windows 7 at minimum." Actually Vista's minimum was 512 MB and W7's was 1 GB.

512 was for Vista home basic. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/919183/system-requirements-for-windows-vista The other editions were more. I only remember because I tried to install it on an older system with 512mb of ram when it came out and it wouldn't let me, ended up using XP. I don't know about Win 7.

#5416016

Loophole35

2017-04-04 13:53

512 was for Vista home basic. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/919183/system-requirements-for-windows-vista The other editions were more. I only remember because I tried to install it on an older system with 512mb of ram when it came out and it wouldn't let me, ended up using XP. I don't know about Win 7.

IIRC 32bit would let you install home on 1GB but 64bit had 2GB minimum.

#5416017

Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2017-04-04 13:55

Hilbert, do you think you will have time to test the R7 with a Fury X or 480, and compare it to Intel so we can put this new theory that Nvidia is gimping AMD to bed or shine light on it with reputable data.

Honestly I'd rather wait until VEGA arrives as we'd need a really fast rendering card here to be able to show a proportional enough difference. GPUs like 480 and even Fury X are much more GPU bound in 1080p. Anyway I do not want to rip open this discussion again in a thread with a different topic. I'll think about it, but right now I am drowning in time with too many reviews in the queue to be able to that.

#5416019

malitze

2017-04-04 14:01

Great article as usual. I'd be interested in your take on what kind of voltage you'd use on a daily basis.

#5416023

Hilbert Hagedoorn

Administrator

2017-04-04 14:08

Great article as usual. I'd be interested in your take on what kind of voltage you'd use on a daily basis.

Overclocked CPU? Depends on your setting and preference. Ryzen needs roughly 1.45 Volts at stress on all cores in the 4.0~4.1 Ghz domain. Now you can fix that voltage at 1.45 which adds roughly 50 Watts under stress on all cores or ~ +15 Watts in idle. If you go a little deeper into fine-tuning you could OC based on offset. Say for each automated clock step upwards an offset of +100mv would do the trick. At that stage your overall power consumption would go down.

#5416038

malitze

2017-04-04 14:31

Overclocked CPU? Depends on your setting and preference. Ryzen needs roughly 1.45 Volts at stress on all cores in the 4.0~4.1 Ghz domain. Now you can fix that voltage at 1.45 which adds roughly 50 Watts under stress on all cores or ~ +15 Watts in idle. If you go a little deeper into fine-tuning you could OC based on offset. Say for each automated clock step upwards an offset of +100mv would do the trick. At that stage your overall power consumption would go down.

I see, I'm kinda hesitant to go that high 24/7. I'm at 3.925 GHz with a mild +43,75mV offset, I'll just stick with that for now. Thanks 😉

#5416053

Dygaza

2017-04-04 14:52

Honestly I'd rather wait until VEGA arrives as we'd need a really fast rendering card here to be able to show a proportional enough difference. GPUs like 480 and even Fury X are much more GPU bound in 1080p. Anyway I do not want to rip open this discussion again in a thread with a different topic. I'll think about it, but right now I am drowning in time with too many reviews in the queue to be able to that.

One possiblity ofc is always downclock cpu's. Get Ryzen And I7-6900K to run at 2GHz each and see how nvidia / AMD behaves on that comparision. Should make AMD cards cpu bound at 1080 a lot more that way aswell. In all honesty, people have been too eager to blame nvidia for gimping that it almost sound like they would do it on purpose. New arch need time to get working optimally. I would only worry if this claimed performance gap would exists after few months, but it's still way too early.

#5416058

JamesSneed

2017-04-04 15:04

Thanks Thanks for this review. Personally the cost is a non issue. If the memory is fast and stable so what is an extra 50-70 bucks on a new build. Its on par with needing 4 sticks of RAM for the x99 just in this case you need two sticks of high bandwidth memory to get the most out of Ryzen. btw minor typo on page 8: "bandwidth numbers will chance bigtime:"

#5416059

Amx85

2017-04-04 15:07

Thanks, nice review but you forget to use the lastest BIOS http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty%20X370%20Professional%20Gaming/#BIOS Last Stable is 1.60 --changes: 1.Improve XMP DRAM compatibility. 2.Add Simultaneous Multi-Threading(SMT) item in BIOS setup. And Lastest Beta 1.93D --changes: Improve XMP DRAM compatibility. Good day for all

#5416061

chispy

2017-04-04 15:15

Thank you Hilbert for this great guide/review of the memory scaling/ cpu overclocking on Ryzen cpus. That should put to rest all those comments that Ryzen 7 it's not a well suited 1080p gaming cpu. Performance will keep up Ryzen with more mature Bios as well. That's only the tip of the iceberg 😀 , also we have to look forward for a lot more software optimizations side of things that should bring out even much more performance out of it. All in all Ryzen it's bringing what most of us were waiting for , an affordable 16 threaded cpu for future proofness. 8 core 16 threads it's the new 4 core year 2017 and going forward into the future.